


history, huh? bet we could make some.

by illmatchtheminrenown



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2020-11-28 01:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 48,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20958269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illmatchtheminrenown/pseuds/illmatchtheminrenown
Summary: quentin is the first son of the united states. prince eliot of fillory is his mortal enemy. after an incident at a royal wedding, the two men are forced to fake a friendship for publicity — and that's when things get interesting.aka the red white and royal blue queliot au we deserve.





	1. be civil to your friend

Quentin Coldwater, First Son of the United States of America, didn’t believe in mortal enemies. Those were things that happened in the fantasy novels he’d devoured as a kid (and still did, but he’d deny it to anyone except Julia), but they didn’t happen in real life.

That is, until he met Prince Eliot of Fillory. Or, _excuse me_, Eliot Hanson-Chatwin-Waugh, Prince of Fillory, grandson to the reigning queen and fourth in line to the throne, behind his mother Princess Jane, brother Charlton, and sister Margo. Prince Eliot, always perfectly coiffed, perfectly dressed, with the perfect turn of phrase for any occasion.

Including, Quentin supposed, the occasion of a FSOTUS-to-be trying to introduce himself at the Olympics. Yeah, that still smarted. And now every time he had to see Fillory’s golden boy, he thought he might just boil over with rage. Or vomit. Or both. Preferably _on_ Perfect Prince Eliot. 

So, upon spotting His Royal Snootiness himself at the royal wedding of Prince Charlton and his new wife Martha, Quentin did the only logical thing, really, especially given that he was already having a bad day thanks to newly-adjusted meds and jet lag combined: stalked up to him, got unreasonably hostile, and accidentally caused an international incident over a wedding cake that cost into the five digits.

Yeah. Not his most shining moment.

And now. _Now._ Now the White House PR head had a look on her face that’s honestly downright terrifying. Quentin swallowed, tucking back a stray bit of hair for the eighth time since this extremely awkward meeting began. But nothing could have braced him for this.

“The palace and the White House will be putting out a joint statement that what happened at the wedding was a completely hilarious, homoerotic-frat-boy accident, and that you and Prince Eliot are not a pair of brawling buffoons but have, in fact, been _close personal friends_ for the past few years.” Kady’s face took on that _I’d-kill-you-but-it’s-not-worth-the-paperwork_ expression. When Quentin turned to his mother in mute appeal, he got only ice in return.

“Quentin, so help me, your ridiculous - and baseless, I might add - feud with Prince Eliot ends here and now. Or doesn’t end, I really don’t care what you think in private. Make a dartboard with his face, stick pins in a voodoo doll, do whatever you want in private. But I will not allow my re-election campaign to suffer just because of some grudge. Understood?”

Quentin did, in fact, understand. It wasn’t easy for his mother, being the first female president and being a divorced, remarried mom with two adult kids to boot. Sometimes, in his most unspoken thoughts, he wished his mother had never run for office, never taken on the establishment and won, never moved them all away from Texas and into DC, where his dreams of quietly going about his life with a minimum of notice and maybe slipping into academia would have been a possibility. Instead, here he was, twenty-one years old, finishing college with no grad school in sight - how could he, when he already knew his mother would need him on the campaign for the next two years? 

It wasn’t that he wasn’t _good_ at playing the role he was supposed to play. Or that he didn’t have help. He didn’t know where he’d be without Julia; he supposed it was true what they said about twins forming two parts of a whole. And they had the third member of their little group, nicknamed the White House Trio by a wholly unimaginative press: Alice Quinn, daughter of the Vice President. She and Quentin had gotten their obligatory fling over with in the first year their parents were in office, and had long since settled in as the very best of friends (even if they did enjoy trolling the press by holing up in hotel rooms and stoking the rumors now and then).

****

That’s how he ended up on a private plane to London, sighing as Kady handed over a fact sheet about Prince Eliot.

“Let’s start with the easy stuff. Tell me about his family,” Kady ordered, lounging back. In total contrast, Zelda, Quentin’s favorite Secret Service agent (not that either of them would admit it) sat stiffly nearby, enjoying a few minutes of rare calm where she could be sure that there was no threat to Quentin, outside his own mind, that is.

“Youngest of three siblings, son of Princess Jane who's first in line for the throne. First princess of Fillory to get a PhD, which is in… history? Yeah, history, specifically World War II era history,” Quentin began, reciting off his fingers. “Older brother, newlywed Prince Charlton, is… what do they call them? A ‘right wanker’, as our pals across the pond say,” he said, raising his fingers for air quotes as Kady snickered and Zelda rolled her eyes.

“Okay, okay. Next is his sister, Princess Margo. A complete badass, not someone anyone should cross if they’d like their balls to stay attached to their bodies,” he continued.

“Crass, but accurate,” Kady acknowledged. “On to interests?”

“Polo, like every blue-blooded twat,” Quentin scoffed. “Also does a lot of charity work with his buddy Penny Adiyodi, some uber-rich dickwad who’s revolutionizing fast, environmental urban transportation. And a connoisseur of fine wines, as if he wasn’t pretentious enough already.” 

“Favorite author?” That one had Quentin stumped. He scrunched up his face and ran a hand through his hair.

“Uh… _Fuck._ I don’t know. Something smarmy and stuffy, I’m sure.”

“Charles Dickens,” Kady prompts, earning a bark of laughter from Quentin.

“Christ. Of course it is. All right. That’s enough for now. I’m going to need a lot more sleep if I’m going to get through this without having a literal breakdown, and since I don’t think that would exactly help the whole international-relations-besties thing we’re trying to fake, I’m out.”

And with that, Quentin did exactly that, pulling his hoodie tighter around him and closing his eyes until Kady moved away. 

When they finally arrived, Quentin braced himself to be greeted by the prince’s equerry. He expected some stuffy, middle-aged toff, so it was more than a bit of a shock to be greeted by a man who couldn’t have been that much older than him, a soft-faced man in a suit and glasses. The man smiled placidly, the kind of smile that’s practiced over years of dealing with idiots.

“Mr. Coldwater, welcome. I’m Josh Hoberman, His Royal Highness’s equerry. If you and your team would like to follow me,” he gestured towards the waiting cars. “We can go over the specifics of today’s photo op, and then…” Quentin let his attention drift, interjecting the necessary nods and “yes”es at the right moments. It seemed like almost no time at all before they were pulling up to Whitespire Palace and he was being herded out to await the prince, who was apparently out riding.

They didn’t have long to wait. Prince Eliot came riding up on _fucking horseback_ and smiled serenely down at them all. 

“Quentin. So nice to see you,” he said in greeting, all politeness and perfect posh manners as he hopped down from his horse like he’d been doing it all his life (which, of course, he had). Quentin gritted his teeth and shook his outstretched hand, smiling for the photographers who were nearby.

“I’d rather be shoving pins in my eyeballs,” he said quietly, still smiling.

“I’m sure we could arrange that,” Eliot replied, a frosty annoyance creeping into his tone. It satisfied Quentin, to know he’d finally gotten under Eliot’s skin even a _fraction_ as much as the opposite had been true for years. He wasn’t expecting Eliot’s next sentence, though.

“Oh dear, I forgot. Torture is really more of your country’s thing, isn’t it, though?” The prince continued smiling placidly even as he offered up what might be the most insulting and interesting thing he’d ever said to Quentin.

“Fuck you,” Quentin spat out, dropping Eliot’s hand but not his smile.

“No, thank you,” Eliot replied, perfectly proper. Their respective handlers took this as the right moment to step in, murmuring nice, easy statements about how the photographers were finished and they could show Quentin to his room now and where they’d need to meet up for the next day’s appearances. Before either of them could even attempt a rematch of their last meeting, they’d been whisked off in opposite directions.

****

Quentin didn’t plan on having to see Prince Eliot again until the next day, which is why it was such a surprise to run into him in the small kitchen set aside for Quentin’s stay, late at night. As per usual, Quentin couldn’t sleep, and had shoved his glasses on his face and meandered into the kitchen in hopes of finding something that might get his mind to just _be quiet_ for a little while.

“Hey,” Quentin said, more than a little shocked to see Eliot looking slightly guilty at being caught there. For some reason, the only thing Quentin could think of to say was, “Nice pjs,” gesturing at Eliot’s silky maroon pajamas. Eliot glared blearily.

“Fuck off. I’ll have you know these are extremely comfortable,” he snapped. “I have to look so presentable, relatable, blah blah all that when I’m out in public, but I’ll be damned if they take over my sleepwear too.” 

Quentin held out his hands in surrender, mildly amused that pajamas, of all things, was what sparked an attitude in Mr. Pristine Prince. They stood in silence for a minute, before Eliot cleared his throat.

“Uh. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d be up. I was just looking for ice cream,” he said, half-apologetic. Quentin raised his eyebrow.

“They don’t have ice cream anywhere other than a guest room?” he asked. Eliot actually almost smiled at that.

“I knew they’d put the good stuff in here,” the prince admitted, moving past Quentin to the freezer, where he rummaged for only a moment before pulling out a box of mini ice cream cones. Another silence settled over them.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to say tomorrow?” Eliot asked. Quentin shot him a dirty look.

“Don’t worry, Your Royal Highness. You aren’t the only professional here. I won’t embarrass either of us, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s easier than it looks. Here, watch.” Quentin hopped off the counter and pulled out his phone. He lined up a shot of the ice cream on the counter, with Eliot’s hand in the shot next to it, slapped his usual preset on it, and typed out a caption, reading aloud as he wrote. “Nothing cures jet lag like midnight ice cream with @HRHPrinceEliot,” he quoted, pressing the upload button. He set the phone down to see Eliot staring at him with a bemused expression. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s just.. How do you do that?” Eliot asked. “Be so… open. With your life, on social media and everything.” 

“Haven’t you heard? Wasting time on social media is, like, our generation’s calling card,” Quentin quipped. When he realized Eliot was serious, he added, “I guess… I like the control of it, if that makes sense? I’m in the spotlight, like it or not, because of who my family is. I can’t control any of that, and that’s… fuck, it’s terrifying. So, my options very quickly became, turn into an anxious, semi-depressed, reclusive insomniac, or learn how to share everything while actually sharing nothing.”

“And you picked the second one,” Eliot finished.

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, my royal fake friend,” Quentin said with more lightness than he meant. “I chose both.” He looked from the ice cream to Eliot, hoping the prince would take the hint, and he did.

“Right. Er. Thanks for the… anyway.” Eliot grabbed the ice cream, pausing on his way out as if to say one more thing.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he said abruptly before leaving Quentin to his nighttime prowling alone.

****

When they headed off together for their morning show interview and hospital visit the next day, neither of them spoke about their encounter the night before. But if there was just the tiniest bit less tension between them? Well, that could only be good news, at least for appearances’ sake. 

Everything was fine - really, it was, at least if you define “fine” as “didn’t punch the guy sitting next to me at a morning show” - until the hospital. Quentin didn’t do well with hospitals, not after they’d been a place of fear for him for so long. He didn’t linger, but did the best he could with greeting the children. He was, at least, pretty good with kids. It surprised him to learn that Eliot was too; he walked into a room to find Eliot deep in conversation with a little girl about who was the best _Star Wars_ character and movie. So Prince Perfect was a closet geek, huh? 

He would have said something to Eliot about it, too, had there not been a terrifying pop sound down the hallway. Before either of them had a chance to say a word, Eliot’s bodyguard Fogg had them both shoved behind the nearest door. Which, unfortunately, happened to be a storage closet. They toppled over, tripping over a mop and knocking over a stack of bedpans and God only knows what else. Quentin couldn’t help feeling a little satisfied at the idea of Eliot getting his face shoved into a pile of bedpans, but that satisfaction was quickly overrun by the discomfort of the situation they were in: crammed into a closet, pinned between Eliot and the wall. 

“Could you _move_, Your Highness? I’m not in the mood to be the little spoon,” Quentin grumbled. 

“Believe me, I would if I could, but there’s no _fucking_ room,” Eliot replied. “I assure you, I’d rather not die with your elbow jammed into my ribs, but, here we are.” Acting on instinct, Quentin jabbed Eliot pointedly with his elbow. He quickly realized, though, that he’d miscalculated: before he knew it, he was on his back, head hitting the linoleum as Eliot pinned him to the ground, holding him down easily. 

“So you do have some fight in you,” Quentin bit out, grinning up at him. 

“Even in a life or death situation, you’re still so… _Q_,” Eliot pronounced, and Quentin wasn’t sure to take it as an insult or a compliment. Probably the former. When Eliot finally moved, he figured he might as well ask.

“So. _Star Wars_, huh?” Eliot glared at him.

“Yes, Quentin. Contrary to what you might think, growing up royal doesn’t mean a _complete_ inability to consume normal pop culture.”

“Funny, I figured it would have been all, you know,” Quentin gestured wildly, or as wildly as the tiny space would permit, “tea parties and etiquette lessons.” Eliot flushed and grimaced.

“That… may have been a big part of it too,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions on _Star Wars_. I am a man of many sides,” he said primly.

“Yeah. _Wrong_ opinions.” Quentin couldn’t believe that had slipped out, but now Eliot was looking at him with deep amusement and he knew there was no backing out at this point. “You told her _Empire Strikes Back_ was the best _Star Wars_ movie and it’s not.” He was aware of how he sounded petulant at this point, but didn’t honestly care.

“Excuse me. Of course it’s the best one. It’s got the Vader reveal, it’s got Han and Leia, it’s got _Lando Calrissian_, for Christ’s sake!” Eliot’s voice actually became indignant at that one.

“Yeah, but it’s so… depressing. It’s _dark_,” Quentin argued. 

“That’s what makes it so good,” Eliot replied. Quentin shook his head. “Then what do _you_ think is the best one, O mighty geek master?” 

“_Return of the Jedi_. Obviously.” 

“What? I’m sorry, did you just say _Return of the Jedi_? We are talking about the same movie, right? The one where the battle is turned because of creepy little alien teddy bears?” Quentin threw his hands up, accidentally knocking into a mop as he did.

“Yeah, but like. There’s _hope_. You know? It’s not all dark and angry and sad, it doesn’t end with everyone miserable. Do you know how much that means to m- to people who watch? This promise that… people who aren’t perfect, people who need something, people who just want to get away from wherever they’re from… can somehow find an escape. There’s got to be some power in that, you know?”

Eliot looked at him with something resembling amusement and… something else. 

“You know, Q, I think I’m starting to.”

Quentin didn’t even have time to snap at him for the sudden nickname, because just then, the door was flung open to find Fogg staring down at them, deeply unimpressed.

“False alarm. Some asshole kid thought it’d be fun to bring fireworks. All clear. You two look… comfortable,” Fogg said, drier than ever as he helped them up. 

“We’re bonding,” Eliot replied, equally dry and not entirely incorrect. 

Before Quentin left the next day, he grabbed Eliot’s phone. He supposed it was a mark of how far they’d come that no one, not even the prince himself, even tried to stop him. 

“Here. It’s gonna be a pain in the ass to keep this up if we have to keep going through handlers the whole time. Take my number. Use it, or whatever,” he said, thrusting the phone back to a slightly stunned Eliot. “Til next time, Your Royal Highness.”


	2. your thoughts betray you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> texting, talking, and new year's eve.

_do you ever wear anything that isn’t gray or blue? or are all you royals colorblind? y’know, bc of the centuries of inbreeding._

**Hilarious. **

_that’s me.  
i’m p sure you’re the first person who’s ever called me that._

**Doesn’t surprise me.**

****

**I rewatched Return of the Jedi. I’m starting to see what you see in it. It’s hopeful. Naive and tidy, but hopeful. I suppose we could all use some of that.**

_i’m sorry, did his royal highness prince poopyhead just admit i was right?_

**Prince… poopyhead?**

_motherfucker. sorry. Autocorrect._

**I don’t think that’s how autocorrect works.**

_no, but it is how auto text replacement works. excuse me, i have a sister to murder._

**Please don’t. I don’t think my image could survive visiting my BFF in prison.**

_aw, you’d visit me?_

**Anything for you, Q darling.**

****  
Quentin walked into Senator Rupert Chatwin’s office without even knocking, only to find the youngest member of the Senate half-slumped over on his desk, a mountain of papers in front of him. Seemingly sensing someone’s presence, Rupert raised his head just slightly.

“Amber, I told you - oh. It’s just you,” he said, spotting Quentin. “What’re you doing here? Should you even be - ah.” His eyes lit up as Quentin tossed him a bag of Skittles. “You’re an angel. Really. I mean it.”

“No, you don’t,” Quentin said, taking a seat across from Rupert without being asked. 

“I see you’ve made yourself quite indispensable to international relations these days,” Rupert commented, pointing to one of the newspapers scattered across his desk, where an old photo op of Quentin and Eliot had been recycled, yet again, for some puff piece about the transatlantic best bros.

“You know that’s all bullshit, right?” Quentin said, munching on his own pack of candy. Rupert shrugged elegantly - everything he did, frankly, was elegant. Must be that several-generations-removed ex-royal blood. But he was, as ever, Quentin’s favorite: an openly gay senator from Connecticut with actual blue-blooded heritage (he was technically something like number 482 in line for the Fillorian throne) and a penchant for getting riled up about all of Quentin’s favorite issues. It’s why Rupert’s campaign was the first campaign Quentin had ever worked on, helping get him elected as an independent - and the first openly gay man in the Senate to boot.

So, for instance, he had files currently on his desk focused on climate change, which he swept away as soon as he caught Quentin staring.

“Don’t you have a role on your mom’s campaign now, kid?” Rupert asked, not without affection.

“Don’t call me kid,” Quentin replied automatically. “And, yeah, I do. She’s got me working on policy, and I’m supposed to be talking to Jules about doing some comms stuff. But… I dunno. It feels… empty. Do you think I don’t actually want to be in politics?”

“Honestly, I got nothing. Figure out what it is you _do_ want to do. But figure it out somewhere other than my office. I gotta finish these up and then get home - I promised Lance I’d actually be on time for dinner this once,” he said, dismissing Quentin but, without meeting his gaze, nudging a file across the desk until it was nearly tipping into his lap.

Quentin grinned, tucking it into his messenger bag. “Pleasure as always, Senator.”

**  
Those questions of _what the fuck am I doing with my life_ kept roiling through Quentin’s head. Helping Julia with her thesis on modern-day witchcraft movements and listening to Alice rattle off poll numbers like they were a Shakespearean monologue just didn’t cut it.

“You should text him again,” Julia informed him serenely as they sprawled out on the floor one day, surrounded by her books and papers in an arrangement that had Quentin questioning if they were researching witchcraft or trying to perform it.

“Who?” Quentin asked distractedly, only to get a pillow thrown at his head.

“You _know_ who,” Julia said, rolling her eyes.

“Prince Perfect,” Alice supplied from the chair opposite them, where she sat calmly highlighting papers and decidedly _not_ sitting on the floor. “Your new bestie.”

“Not you too! Vix, you know we’re not _actually_ friends, right? Why do I have to keep telling everyone this?” Quentin groaned, flopping on his back. Julia flopped down next to him so they could stare up at the ceiling like they had as kids.

“You obviously want to talk to somebody who isn’t me and who isn’t Alice. You haven’t talked to James since high school, although I’m still not entirely sure how you two grew apart. And you have, literally, no other friends. So. Go text the Prince of Fillory, tell him your woes, and let Alice and I get our work done in peace.

Quentin got up with a huff. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“Yup, pretty much,” Alice said cheerfully, without even looking up from her papers.

**  
For once, Quentin took Julia’s advice. Well, sort of. He emailed, thanks to a highly secured, private email server, instead of texted. It felt more formal and less personal, somehow, and at this point in time, that’s exactly what he needed. And to his (mild) surprise, Eliot emailed back. And so on. And somewhere along the line, they started actually talking about things that mattered.

Eliot told Quentin about his sister Margo, who was, Quentin gathered, his ride-or-die as much as Jules was his. Eliot’s protective streak, of which Quentin had only gotten glimpses, was in full effect when it came to Margo.

**She’s the toughest person I know, and the tabloids almost broke her. I started calling her “High Queen Margo” though, and that seems to cheer her right up. She’d make a brilliant queen, probably the best out of all three of us. It’s a shame she wasn’t born first, honestly. What is it with monarchies, always getting birth order the wrong way round?**

**Anyway, that’s my way of saying that I understand, I suppose. Also that I do not understand how you can have a sister as lovely as Julia and still go out looking like you do. Truly, Q, hoodies are an abomination unless you are Mark Zuckerberg, in which case they are a pretentious abomination. **

**Yours ever sincerely, **

**El**

Quentin, in turn, told Eliot about his own life, about wanting to do some good but not knowing whether that meant going into politics or trying to build his own path, about missing academia as if it were a part of him. One particularly trying day, when everything had gone wrong, his dad had come for dinner and promptly ended up in an argument with his mom and stepdad, and he was headed down a dark road, he impulsively FaceTimed Eliot, who answered, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“Quentin?” he murmured, and a shot of emotion went through Quentin at the sound of Eliot’s sleepy voice, followed immediately by guilt.

“Shit. I forgot about the whole time zone thing. I’m sorry, I’ll -”

“Q. Talk to me.”

And so he did. It all spilled out - his frustrations over his career or lack thereof, his family drama, and, in a moment he regretted almost instantly, how he was living in fear that his mental health would take a nosedive again. There was silence for a moment, Eliot’s expression unreadable.

“Okay. Wow. You weren’t kidding. That is a lot,” Eliot started. “No, Quentin, it’s all right. I get it.”

“No, you don’t. No one does,” Quentin muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. 

“No, Quentin,” Eliot said, an odd note in his voice. “You’re not hearing me. I _get it_.” He paused for a second before barreling on. “I just… Ah. I, uh. One of my ‘official’ hobbies is being an expert on wine. That’s because it makes it easier to cover up that… Well, let’s call it more of an ‘unhealthy coping mechanism’ than a hobby, shall we?” he said, the lightness in his tone at odds with what he was saying. He held up a hand before Quentin could interject. “It’s under control, for the most part. Don’t you worry. We’re here to get _you_ to fall asleep.”

“Bore me to sleep, then, Your Highness,” Quentin said, flopping back on his bed, his phone propped up in front of him. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

**  
_your most not-serene, not-majestic highness,_

_thanks._

_q._

****

“Nice tie,” is the first thing Quentin snarks out when Eliot and Penny come up to him at the White House New Year’s party. Eliot was wearing a truly spectacular tie, patterned with gold and purple and several other colors that Quentin didn’t want to name for fear of being corrected on their _very specific_ names by Eliot. 

“What can I say, I wouldn’t want to get kicked out for not being exciting enough,” he quipped. Quentin snorted. One of the things he’d learned about Eliot was that his neutral-colored, perfectly boring wardrobe was _definitely_ not of his own choosing - it was some dumb Fillorian royal rule about the royals not making major statements of preference in any arena, fashion included. Left to his own devices, the silk patterned pajamas Quentin had seen him in would be the least flamboyantly elaborate outfit Eliot would choose.

For now, a tie would have to do. Quentin was so focused on Eliot that he hardly even noticed Penny swooping in on Julia, introducing himself with a smooth comment and a kiss of her hand.

“You’re a charmer," she said, grinning wickedly.

“And you’re a goddess,” Penny replied, smoothly whisking Julia off to get a drink somewhere, leaving Eliot behind to gleefully reveal to Quentin just how long Penny had been obsessing over Julia.

The night passed uneventfully, Eliot sticking with Quentin - almost like _real_ friends, Quentin thought, before realizing with only a slight amount of alarm that they actually might be. 

The DJ had been getting progressively more energetic as the night had gone on, and when Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” started playing, Quentin couldn’t resist any longer and dragged Eliot with him to the dance floor. Eliot watched him with amusement for a moment.

“What, you don’t dance?” Quentin asked, raising his voice above the music. Eliot shook his head, tilting to one side in that wry amusement that Quentin had learned meant _oh, you poor thing._

“No, Q. _You_ don’t dance.” He put his hands on Quentin’s hips and guided him in movement for a moment. Before Quentin could overthink what it meant that he sort of liked how Eliot’s long, strong fingers felt guiding his hips back and forth, the chorus started up again, and he lost focus. 

“Oh my God, shut _up_, this is my _shit!_” Quentin shrieked giddily before beginning to belt out the chorus along with an entire ballroom full of semi-drunk partygoers. The countdown to midnight started at the end of the song, and at the stroke of twelve, just like every year, he leaned over to Alice and pulled her into a drunk, sloppy, laughing kiss, both of them giggling so hard that they almost missed each other’s mouths. Out of the corner of his eye, Quentin thought he saw Penny dip down to kiss Julia, too, but he was soon distracted by who _wasn’t_ there: Eliot, who was cutting through the crowd faster than Quentin had ever seen him move. 

Quentin slipped out of the party and, before long, found Eliot outside, gazing up at the stars. They exchanged a few maudlin sentiments about the stars and beauty and distance before Eliot fixed him with a clear, not hazy at all look.

“Do you ever wonder… what it would be like to just be some anonymous person out in the world?” Eliot asked. Quentin shrugged. 

“I dunno. I mean, the only reason I’m not normal is because of who my mom is. I’m one-hundred percent boring, ordinary, depressed nerd other than that.”

“I’d be a politician, I think,” Eliot said, almost dreamily. “But not like. A big one. Like, a small-town mayor, taking care of a little group of citizens, making sure everything is all right. Barring that… I think I could be a writer, maybe.” he mused. “But the traditional family career track is the military, of course. And then ribbon-cutting and a lifetime of being a backup just in case someone finally gets pissed off enough to off Charlton.”

“Could you really blame them?” Quentin joked, trying to lighten the mood. Eliot did crack a smile at that.

“Fair enough. I’d date more too, I guess,” he said, still looking away. 

“Oh, right, because it’s so hard to get a date as a prince,” Quentin said, rolling his eyes. “You’re not exactly lacking for options.” Eliot finally turned to fix Quentin in his gaze.

“The options I’d like…” he trailed off, searching for exactly the right words to make things clear while maintaining plausible deniability. “They don’t seem to be _options_ at all.”

Quentin just stared at him, utterly clueless. “What?” Eliot’s voice took on a more exasperated undercurrent.

“I’m saying that I have… people… who interest me. But I shouldn’t pursue them. At least, not in my position,” he tried again. _Come on, Q. No one is this dense._

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” _I stand corrected._

“You really don’t?”

“I really, really don’t.” Before Eliot’s brain could catch up to the rest of him, he made the decision.

“Christ, you’re as thick as it gets,” he said, looking right as Quentin’s sweetly confused, handsome face before he reached forward, put both his hands on his cheeks, and kissed him.

Quentin’s brain nearly short-circuited. _Eliot_ was kissing him. Funny, smart-ass Eliot, who hid his sparkling personality behind the perfect royal facade, who talked him through shitty days and shittier nights, who was really _unreasonably_ good-looking and for some reason had decided to kiss… him?

Fortunately, Quentin’s brain caught up with the program, and he leaned into the kiss. Eliot’s mouth parted open, and Quentin followed suit, and Eliot reached out and tangled his hands in Q’s hair, and it was just as soft as he’d been imagining.

And then Eliot pulled back.

“Shit.” He managed to spit out something resembling a half-drunk apology, then scurried off to find Penny and get the _hell_ out of the party, out of town, out of the _country_. 

Quentin stood there on the lawn, lips still tingling from where Eliot’s had been on them only seconds earlier. He turned on his heel and headed straight to bed, because there was no _way_ he could go back to a room full of diplomats and VIPs with the feel of Prince Eliot's hands still burned into his hips and the literal taste of Eliot still on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! comments fuel my "screw canon" creative rage, so bring them on!


	3. a million things i haven't done, but just you wait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> quentin reflects on his actions.

Try as he might, Quentin couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss in the days and weeks that followed. He’d never thought of himself as anything but straight, and he was still pretty damn certain that he liked girls. The more he thought about it, though, the more things started slotting into place. Small things, like who he’d obsessed over in TV shows and magazines as a kid and a teenager. But bigger things, too. 

He’d never really thought about why he had gravitated towards working on Chatwin’s campaign years ago, but there had always been something about Chatwin that felt like a kindred spirit. Quentin had always assumed it was a shared passion for education reform and a like-minded underlying geekiness. Now, he can’t help wondering if he saw something else admirable in Chatwin, who was so open and unapologetic about his sexual orientation from day one. 

And then there had been James. Shit. James, his best friend from high school. James, handsome and athletic and always inseparable from Quentin. 

James, who he’d spent an hour at a time making out with and mutually jerking off on more than one occasion. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. They were both horny teenage guys, just helping each other out. Or at least, that’s what Quentin had been convinced of, since he was convinced of his own heterosexuality. If he were gay, wouldn’t it have been… weird? In hindsight, though… he’d been really, _really_ blind.

He just needed some confirmation. 

“Vix, you know me,” Quentin began one afternoon when they were alone, shuffling some papers around while Alice worked on crunching her latest numbers. Alice let out a snort.

“Why yes, Quentin, I do. _Biblically_,” she said, waggling her eyebrows playfully.

“Thanks for the reminder.” When Quentin didn’t continue, Alice actually looked up and focused on him.

“Quentin? What’s up?” she asked. Quentin took a deep breath.

“So. Uh. Knowing me as well as you do… Odds on me being into guys?” To her credit, Alice just tilted her head appraisingly before rattling off her answer.

“Seventy-eight percent chance of latent bisexual tendencies. One hundred percent chance that this is _not_ a hypothetical question. Oh, Quentin,” she crooned, placing a hand on his hair as he let out a groan and let his head fall into his hands, “What’s got you like this?” When he didn’t answer, she asked, a glint in her eye, “Is it… you know. _Him?_”

All Quentin could manage was another groan, which Alice took as an affirmative. She cackled in delight.

“Am I that obvious?” Quentin asked, finally raising his head.

“No, no,” she quickly reassured him. “It’s just. You know. He’s gay, and you’re both hot. It makes sense.”

“He’s… he’s _gay?!_” Quentin spluttered. “But he was… they just photographed him with a girl!” Alice sighed in her wonderfully put-upon way.

“Yes, dear. They did. And if you bothered to pay any attention to gossip _at all_, you’d know that Lady Fen has been a friend of the royal family since birth. Literally. She apparently once punched a guy at school who was trying to bully Eliot when they were, like, five. I promise you, he’s _so_ gay.” She paused. “Now I have to ask. Did something… uh. Happen?”

Quentin blushed furiously. “Uh. So at the New Year’s party? Eliot sort of… kissed me? And then he ran away after,” he added, suddenly upset again. Alice grinned so widely Quentin wondered how it didn’t hurt.

“Yes he did! Yes he did!” she crowed, smacking Quentin on the shoulder. “Was he good? Did he, you know, use tongue?” Quentin squawked indignantly. “Well?” 

Quentin sagged a little.

“Yes.” 

“Yes it was good, or yes there was tongue?” Alice prodded.

“Yes,” Quentin repeated. A moment later, Alice was cackling again. “Vix! Knock it off. It’s not funny.”

“Yes it is. Seriously, let’s look at the evidence. You’ve been Draco Malfoy-level obsessed with him for years, you start texting him at all hours of the day and night, he cornered you at a party and kissed you _with tongue_, and you _liked it_.”

“I know, okay?” Quentin said, frustrated. “I know from, like, a logical standpoint, it looks like a massive, obvious crush. I just never thought… And, you know. What does this mean for me. Like, in terms of sexuality?” Alice looked at him, wide-eyed.

“Oh. Sorry, I thought we were already there with the whole you-being-bi thing. Sorry. Continue. I am here for you, did you want to come out to me or…?” He half-heartedly threw the pillow he’d been hugging at her head.

“Am I, though? Bi?” he asked. Alice had all the answers, so she’d have to have this one too.

“I can’t tell you that, you complete idiot!” she cried.

“But like… how did you know you were?” Quentin asked. Alice shrugged.

“I dunno. I think I was… sixteen, maybe? I was at a party. And I touched a boob. And that was that. No one’s gonna make a mistily-filmed indie film about it,” she answered wryly. Quentin flopped back down on the floor with a groan, covering his face with a pillow again. Alice yanked the pillow off his face.

“Oh my God. _Quentin_. Babe. This is _good_, though. He’s probably confused, and nervous, because, you know. But this is great news. Honestly, you’ve been wanting him to dick you down forever, and now that’s, like, an actual possibility.”

Quentin was too busy _processing_ to even muster up the energy to yell at her. Because right now, he had a lot of thinking to do.

****

A few weeks later, Quentin found himself moodily nursing a glass of wine at the annual Young America gala. And frankly, the event was already getting boring. He’d had a brief moment when he’d spotted Eliot when he thought maybe, just _maybe_, things might be looking up. But then he’d let his bitchiness get the best of him, greeting the prince with a pleasant but venomous, “cool to see you’re not dead” and a nod to Penny before being herded away into dozens of photo ops. Now, he kept watching Eliot from across the room, who, to his frustration, hadn’t looked at him once.

“Alice,” he began, glancing nervously around. “How much do you love me?” Alice didn’t even bother looking at him to reply.

“Enough to embarrass myself mildly, not enough to commit a felony. Why?” she deadpanned. 

“I need you to go get Eliot away from his table,” Quentin admitted. Alice’s face lit up with a gleeful smirk.

“Oo, is this some sort of plan of seduction? I mean, I don’t need to know the details - I _really_ don’t - but count me in!” With all the grace of a born diplomat, she appeared at Eliot’s side so quickly as if by magic, expertly wrangling him away from whatever VIP he was talking to and drawing him into conversation with her instead. Quentin slipped over to where Zelda was standing, keeping a bored but watchful eye on the room.

“Zelda. I need your help,” he said in a low voice. Instantly, she was on alert, and he shook his head quickly. “No, no, nothing’s wrong, not that kind of help. I. Er,” he stammered, starting to fiddle with his cuffs.

“Out with it, Coldwater,” Zelda said. “I’ve got a job to do, and it doesn’t involve listening to your… whatever this is.”

“I need to talk to Prince Eliot. Alone.” He looked up at her, pleading with her to understand. Judging by the smile that cracked her face for a split second before returning to its usual neutral expression, she understood enough. 

“You can go to the Red Room, but any further away than that is a no-go,” Zelda decided. “And not for long. Five minutes, you got that? Five minutes and that’s _it_.” Quentin couldn’t help grinning.

“You’re a saint, Z, really,” he said, earning an eyeroll in return. Quentin took a few deep breaths, the way his last therapist had taught him to. In for a few counts, hold, then exhale, repeat. When he realized there was pretty much no way he was getting his heart rate down to anything resembling normal, he gave up and strode over to where Eliot was slightly cornered by Alice. Eliot’s face took on a strange expression when he saw Quentin approaching - was it resignation, or was that something like hope? Quentin didn’t bother taking time to process any of that.

“Hi. Come with me,” Quentin gritted out, all hopes of eloquence long gone. He grabbed a shocked Eliot by the elbow, steering him through the room and hoping that no one would notice the First Son nearly dragging a prince out of the crowd. Eliot, apparently, was surprised enough to not put up any resistance until they were nearly out of the room.

“Do you mind?” he sputtered, a little bit terrified as to where, exactly, Quentin was leading him.

“Shut your face,” Quentin replied, surprising even himself with the bluntness (and, yeah, Eliot had to admit it was a little bit of a turn-on to see baby Q taking charge like this, not that he had any intention of ever letting _anyone_ know that). Eliot’s stomach dropped when he saw a vaguely familiar Secret Service agent opening a door into a smaller room off the main dining room, then closing it behind them after Quentin’s dry assurance that, no, he wasn’t about to commit a royal murder.

Eliot managed to hang onto the last shred of his dignity long enough to demand, “What in God’s earth are you doing?” He was about 99% certain he was going to get yelled at or perhaps even punched, and that last 1% of doubt was just about gone as Quentin snapped, “Shut _up_, shut all the way up, oh my _God_.”

And then shoved him against a wall and kissed him so hard he lost any and all ability to think for a moment. When he did get his mind back, it was filled with thoughts like _oh my God_ and _please don’t let this be a dream again_ and _Christ, his lips are soft_. And somewhere in there, he managed to start kissing Quentin back. His brief suggestion that they should slow down - and, _really_, where the _hell_ did that come from? - was met a beautiful, befuddled look that was quickly becoming his favorite expression of Quentin’s. And then the boy _smiled_ awkwardly up at him.

“Hey,” Quentin said, leaning over suddenly again to press a surprisingly chaste second kiss to Eliot’s lips before pulling back with a soft, almost proud smile. It was that small, almost bashful _hey_ that did it for Eliot, and this time, he was the one grabbing Quentin’s face to crash them back together.

Quentin shoved aside a very expensive-looking bowl filled with fruit (plums and peaches, Eliot registered through his deeply horny haze), and somehow, Eliot found himself perched on a side table, shoved up against a portrait of _Alexander Hamilton_ of all people, and furiously making out with this beautiful boy. Quentin outright _moan_ when Eliot took back some control, knotting one hand in Quentin’s lovely, just-a-little-too-long hair and using the other to ruck up his shirt, sliding a cool hand beneath his jacket. 

“Time’s up!” Zelda called from outside, and Quentin pulled away, causing Eliot to whine at the loss of contact. He managed to meet Quentin’s eyes, and the sheer _wrecked_ look on his face made him want to reach back out and pull him in again and never let go, Secret Service and party guests be damned. Turned out, he was just as much a mess as Quentin was, with his arousal painfully obvious, and it took a muttered chorus of Fillory’s national anthem and some minimally effective tucking and smoothing to even remotely make himself look presentable again. His efforts to appear calm were pretty much shattered when Quentin stopped him on the way out.

“So, uh. Here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to stay at least five hundred feet away from me for the rest of the night, or else I will probably end up doing something I really regret in public,” Quentin began.

“More than usual?” Eliot couldn’t resist, although the jab had a different tone to it than their bickering ever had before.

“Oh my God, didn’t I tell you to _shut up?_” Quentin groaned, before recovering himself. “And then you are going to come to the East Bedroom on the second floor at eleven tonight, and I am going to do _very_ bad things to you. And if you fucking ghost me again I will have you put on every no-fly list known to man. Got it?”

Oh, Eliot got it. 

Quentin, on the other hand, managed to turn back into an anxious, pacing mess by the time 10:48 pm rolled around. What if Eliot didn’t come? What if he did, but only to tell him that he’d had time to think about it and it wasn’t a good idea after all? What if he did, but left because Quentin was just _so bad at this?_

A knock on the door startled Quentin out of his spiraling thoughts, and when he opened it, Eliot was standing there. He’d shed his jacket and tie from earlier, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. Staring at him, Quentin had a brief moment of total surprise that he had _ever_ thought he was straight.

“Find it okay?” he asked, ushering Eliot in and locking the door behind him. Eliot smirked.

“Yeah. There was a very helpful Secret Service agent. Zelda, I think her name was?” Quentin had to grin at that too, making a mental note to get Zelda a tin of that specialty tea she liked so much. His good humor quickly faded when he realized that he hadn’t really thought this through. There’s no PowerPoint or etiquette lesson on “What To Do When Your Former Enemy Turned Fake BFF Comes To Your Room For Sexy Reasons After You’ve Just Figured Out You’re Bi Because Of Him.”

Fortunately, Eliot seemed to have thought at least a couple steps ahead, and he pulled a still-gaping Quentin close and kissed him, and _fuck_, that was good. The kiss was somehow softer than the ones they’d shared in the Red Room, and for a moment, Quentin felt like the hero in one of his favorite fantasy novels (definitely not _Lord of the Rings_ because literally _no one_ was having sex in those books, but, the point still stands), kissing the love interest in the misty fairytale mornings.

“Get on the couch,” he managed to hiss out, pulling back just a little bit. Eyes sparkling, Eliot obeyed, flopping onto the couch and staring up at Quentin like he was the absolute sun. Quentin stepped forward, bracketing Eliot’s legs with his own, leaning down to _almost_ kiss him.

“You ghosted me for _weeks_,” he breathed instead. Eliot had the good grace to look abashed, or, at least, as abashed as he could when they were literally pressing up against each other. 

“I know. I’m _sorry_. I panicked, alright?” he said. “I just… I’d been thinking about it. You. For a long time. And I thought maybe you felt the same way. But then you kissed Alice, and I just… decided to do a very stupid thing. And then I ran away, because that’s what I do.” Quentin’s eyes gleamed as he leaned closer again. 

“You were _jealous_. You _want_ me,” he said, almost surprised. Eliot’s face turned serious. 

“I would think that’s obvious by now.” As if to punctuate his point, he hoisted Quentin closer until he was fully straddling his lap, kissing him deeply. This was _much_ more like what Quentin remembered, all quick breathing and teeth and _tongue_, holy _fuck_. And he didn’t want it to stop. So, like, fuck the misty fairytale. 

He pawed at the buttons on Eliot’s shirt, managing to get a couple of them undone before Eliot took pity on him, nimbly getting it undone and over his head, then doing the same for Quentin, who was now grinding down, distracted at the thoughts of how strong and nimble Eliot’s fingers must be from years of polo and piano lessons and- 

“Wait,” Eliot said, putting a finger under Quentin’s chin to tip it up a little bit. “I want you on the bed.” 

And, _okay_, apparently Eliot turning his royal bossiness on Quentin was also a huge turn-on. Quentin was learning all sorts of new things tonight. He obeyed, scrambling up the bed, which gave him a chance to really _look_ at Eliot for the first time tonight. Eliot wasn’t a fairytale prince in the way the drawings in books were: he was too lanky, too unique-looking for that. But he was quite possibly the most beautiful thing Quentin had ever seen, and if Quentin couldn’t get his hands back on him, like, _now_, he thought he just might die. 

Yet again, he couldn't believe he ever thought he was remotely straight. 

Quentin watched through a haze as Eliot moved to bracket his body, then reached his hand down. 

“I’m gonna take your pants off now,” he informed Quentin calmly. Quentin couldn’t do more than just nod wordlessly as Eliot made quick work of his button, his zipper, his boxers, sliding a spit-slick hand into his boxers - and that _definitely_ was not very prim and proper, holy shit - and sending Quentin into a litany of words, most of which were either some form of “Eliot” or very creative profanity. 

“You little shit, I hate you so much, mother_fu_-” Quentin’s whines were cut off by Eliot twisting his hand _just so_, leaning up to kiss him again. “Wait, wait, stop,” Quentin said, pushing Eliot off just a little bit. Eliot sat back, looking worried, and Quentin just wanted to kiss the fear off his face. 

“I mean, don’t stop. Seriously. But… it’s not fair you get to do that before I even get to see you naked.” The words spilled out from some confident part of Quentin that he had _no idea_ even existed. Guess Eliot just brought that out in him. Eliot, for his part, seemed more than pleased with this turn of events, obediently and efficiently stripping before returning to the bed, where he stretched himself out to cover Quentin with his body completely. 

“Hey, I-” Quentin flipped them over, much to Eliot’s amusement. He started kissing a trail down Eliot’s body, moving lower until it became obvious what his destination was. Before he got there, though, he paused. 

“I haven’t. Uh. Done this, before,” he admitted. Eliot apparently got the wrong idea, because he sat up almost too quickly. 

“If you don’t want to, Q, that’s fine. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want-” Quentin cut him off. 

“No, I want. I guess I just wanted, to, uh, like a warning? In case it’s not very good.” Quentin ducked his head apologetically, a piece of hair falling into his face and hiding it from view. 

“Q. I’m in bed with a hot guy who wants to suck my dick. I’m sure I’ll manage,” Eliot answered, drier than ever. Quentin, blushing fiercely, took that as the go-ahead to continue, and, judging by Eliot’s reactions, many of which involved repeating either _fuck_ or _sweetheart_, he did just fine. Eliot was also apparently, more than happy to return the favor, leaving Quentin gasping and grasping wildly at the sheet and at his hair. 

Afterward, they lay, half-tangled in the sheets. 

“So, uh, I guess I should say, I’m bisexual,” Quentin offered up. Eliot looked down at where Quentin’s bare hip was slipping out from beneath the sheets. 

“I’m… _so_ gay,” he muttered, half to Quentin and half to himself, causing Quentin to snort in a very unsexy way. 

Quentin hated for this to end, but he also knew what would happen if it didn’t, and he wasn’t really in the mood to out himself and the prince of Fillory to a bunch of panicked security agents, so. 

“Listen, man, you can stay as long as you want, but, uh. You’ll probably want to get back to your own room before morning, unless you want a bunch of pissed-off Secret Service and PPOs busting down my door to drag you out,” Quentin said. If Eliot was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “You could stay for another round?” Quentin offered. Eliot shook his head, getting up and started to get dressed. 

“It’s okay, I really should get back to my room before anyone notices.” He finished getting dressed, and Quentin got up and put his own boxers back on to walk Eliot to the door. Eliot hesitated, awkward for the first time that night. 

“This was… uh…” 

“Hey. Relax. We can still be the same as we’ve been. Emails, texting, all that shit. Just, y’know. With blowjobs, now,” Quentin said, shrugging. Eliot wavered for a second, as if trying to figure out what to offer Q - a handshake? A hug? 

“Jesus Christ, dude,” Quentin laughed, “You just had my dick in your mouth, I think you can kiss me goodnight.” Eliot let out a laugh at that too, leaning down to press their foreheads together before kissing him, soft and sweet again. 

As soon as the door shut, Quentin leaned up against it, staring up at the ceiling like every rom-com cliche in the book. 

Oh, he was _so_ fucked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the red room scene from rwrb is honestly one of the most queliot things i've ever read. i also had a lot of fun picking out the chapter title and summary for this one ;)


	4. spectacular

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> emails, pt. 1. plus: Q and Julia have a little talk.

_His Royal Highness Prince Eliot the Spectacular,_

_because that’s what your title should be. tell your grandma i say so. are you going to be in paris for the fundraiser this weekend?_

_quentin, first son of ‘murica, yeah!_

**Quentin, First Son of Treasonous Rebels,**

**I will have you know that you are the first person who has ever called me spectacular, but I assure you, you will not be the last.**

**No, I’m not going to Paris, I have a previous engagement in Germany. You shall have to find someone else to accost in a dining room. May I suggest Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp? He’s simply yummy. **

**Regards,**

**Prince Eliot of Fillory (which just sounds boring now, thanks.)**

_Royal of Unusual Sarcasm,_

_i’d like you to know that i read that entire email imagining you sitting upright at your desk, perfect posture and all, running spell check before you sent it, and trying to decide if “yummy” is appropriate slang (it isn’t, but in the case of Louis Spencer, it’s accurate, so i’ll let it slide)._

_and don’t you start with me. if memory serves, you liked being “accosted,” even at the expense of a lovely bowl of fruit. don’t worry, it was worth it. and if memory also serves, you’re not boring at all. especially when you do that thing with your tongue._

_-q, first son of sexually frustrated emails_

**Q, First Son of Making It Hard To Keep a Straight Face During Important Meetings,**

**I hate you. Will see what I can do about Germany.**

**Regards,**

**Horribly Resigned Heir**

**P.S. I’ll have you know that I can’t look at peaches or plums anymore without getting uncomfortably aroused.**

For the most part, things did continue, for the most part, similarly to how they had before things had… evolved between them. They still showed up for photo ops and attended incredibly boring events and made sure to clap each other on the shoulder and smile pleasantly whenever anyone was nearby.

Then, of course, they’d sneak off to make out furiously in a stairwell. Or they’d go in separate entrances to a hotel so that Eliot could sneak up to Quentin’s room and celebrate Q’s birthday with cupcakes and blowjobs. Or they’d FaceTime when their mutual insomnia kept them up at all hours of the night.

“Hey,” Quentin said on one of their calls after Eliot let about five dick jokes go by without comment, “You sound weird. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Eliot said, sounding decidedly _not_ fine. Quentin let the silence stretch out for a minute, turning things over in his head before speaking again.

“You know, this… thing we have. You can tell me stuff. I mean, I tell you stuff all the time. Politics stuff and nutso family stuff and my fucked up mental health stuff. I mean, we all know I’m not exactly a poster child for healthy communication or giving advice, but. You know. I’m here.”

Another pause.

“I’m not… historically… great at talking about things,” Eliot said stiffly.

“Well, I wasn’t historically great at blowjobs, but we all gotta expand our horizons sometime, sweetheart,” Quentin replied, hoping the lightness of tone might nudge Eliot into opening up. Apparently, he knew Eliot as well as he thought, because it worked. 

_“Wasn’t?”_

“Hey!” Quentin huffed. “Are you trying to say I’m still not good at them? Because I can always stop, if you’d prefer.”

“No, I wouldn’t dream of it, Q darling,” Eliot said quickly, and Quentin mentally patted himself on the back for the tiny smile he could hear in Eliot’s voice. “It was just that first one that was… well. Enthusiastic.”

“I don’t remember any complaining.”

“Yeah, well, I’d been fantasizing about it forever, so…” Eliot trailed off again. Sensing that he still needed another push, Quentin rolled over and very deliberately said into the phone, “Baby.”

It’s a thing, you see. Like _peaches and plums_, it’s one of those things that’s totally normal and also totally not and so, naturally, it’s totally them. Quentin has slipped up a few times and said it, and every single time, Eliot absolutely _melts_, so Quentin is not above playing dirty here. So sue him. A huff on the other side of the line tells him that, once again, he’s not off base in the slightest. 

“It’s just… how did you put it? Nutso family stuff,” Eliot admitted. “I don’t suppose you read any Fillorian tabloids, do you?” Quentin shook his head before remembering Eliot couldn’t actually _see_ him and verbalized his “no” instead.

“Well, the _Daily Lorian_ always enjoyed airing our dirty laundry. A few years ago, they were the ones who gave Bambi the nickname…” he trailed off.

“Powder Princess,” Quentin supplied, his heart sinking.

“Quite.” Eliot cleared his throat. “Well, someone _douchebag_ managed to bypass security and spray paint that lovely moniker on her car. She’s fine. More shaken up about the security breach than the stupid nickname.”

“And you’re upset because the rumors aren’t true,” Quentin surmised.

“No, Q. They… are true, actually.” Eliot sighed, rolling over to put his phone in a more comfortable position. “See, Margo only ever wanted to play music. Gran made her learn violin, much more refined, but it was always guitar for our Bambi at heart. Anyway, Dad died her last year of uni… it was so sudden, he was just. Gone.”

Quentin’s heart dropped into his stomach, trying not to imagine his own dad, solid, stable, _kind_ Ted Coldwater, just up and vanishing to some illness.

“Fuck,” was all he could manage. 

“Indeed,” Eliot said, voice catching. “We all went off a bit. Charlton got a bug up his ass about being the man of the household, and I just stopped caring about anything, because he wasn’t great, but he was still, you know, my dad, and Margo… well, Margo decided to pursue her music. And by pursue her music, I mean sneaking out to play secret shows at all the posh London clubs… and doing a frankly _astounding_ amount of cocaine. Which, of course, the papers _loved_,” he spat out bitterly.

“Anyway,” he continued. “Bambi went to rehab, and it lasted all of eight hours before she checked herself out and went back to a club. And then she called me and we were sitting together on the back stoop of some ungodly hipster club, she was high and I was drunk and we were both crying and… And I told her she wasn’t allowed to kill herself with coke because Dad was gone and I was gay and possibly an alcoholic and I needed her. And that’s how I came out to her.”

“So, uh. Does anyone else know? About you, I mean?” Quentin asked gently. 

“Margo’s the only one in the family I’ve told, but I’d lay money the rest of them at least suspect.” Eliot’s voice took on that nasty edge again. “Gran sat me down before I went to uni and made it really quite clear that I was not permitted to let any… _unnatural_ desires cause embarrassment to the crown, and that there were ‘appropriate channels’ to help keep up appearances.”

“Like Lady Fen,” Quentin suggested, the lightness in his tone betraying a very real fear.

“Like Fen,” Eliot agreed, and he actually smiled. “Ironically enough, if this were, like, a hundred years ago - or twenty years ago, frankly - I probably _would_ end up in an arranged marriage with Fen. Luckily for both of us, that’s not an option either of us is remotely interested in, and arranged marriages don’t play well with the press these days. But I do love her, just… not like that,” he mused.

And somehow, this was what opened the floodgates, and they started talking about other things. Every thing. Quentin got to hear about Eliot’s father, largely absent but still his _dad_. He heard about growing up in a palace and sneaking out and learning to sail and ride and fence. He heard about Princess Jane, how she was just as frustrated as her children at having to button up so much of herself and hide it away. And yes, he heard about Eliot’s college days, about the variety of guys who were all too eager to sleep with a smart-mouthed, gorgeous prince and teach him everything they knew but who were chased off by the secrecy and the paperwork and, more often than not, by Eliot’s own dark moods and shifting frustrations.

Eliot got to hear about Quentin as a kid, running for student council even though he could barely get through a kiddie debate without passing out from nerves. He heard about the house where Q grew up, being kept up by friendly neighbors these days. And yes, he heard about James, about Quentin’s inability to see what was in front of his face, about Quentin guiltily sneaking James’s pills when he wasn’t looking because he was too afraid to face a diagnosis of his own. About Julia and the guilt Q felt knowing that she wouldn’t have moved to the White House with them if not to keep an eye on Quentin and make sure he didn’t do anything stupid.

“Well, she didn’t entirely succeed at that,” Eliot quipped.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, baby,” Quentin fired back, and was rewarded with a burst of hearty laughter, his favorite sound these days. When they’d settled down some, Quentin looked at the clock and saw just how long they’d been talking for.

“I miss you,” Quentin said, and instantly berated himself for letting it slip.

“I miss you too,” said Eliot.

****

Quentin forgot - _again_ \- about a lunch with Julia. When he burst into her room, overflowing with apologies and running a hand through his hair, he only got stony silence. 

“I’m sorry,” he tried again. “Please don’t be mad at me. We can do lunch tomorrow,” he offered desperately.

“I don’t care about a stupid meal, Quentin,” she snapped. “I just don’t want you to be Mom! You never sleep - don’t think I haven’t noticed you forgetting your meds sometimes too - you’re always throwing yourself into the next big project, you let Mom use you for whatever she needs, you’re always showing up in the papers-”

“Jules, this was always gonna be it,” Quentin protested. “I’m gonna be a politician. This is how things are. And yeah, it sucks sometimes. But I’m starting right after graduation. It’s my choice, okay?”

“Well, maybe it’s the wrong choice,” Julia said. 

“What the hell, Jules? You’ve always been in my corner up til now! What changed? Why not anymore?” Quentin demanded.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because, up til now, you weren’t _fucking the prince of Fillory!_”

That was pretty effective in getting Quentin to lose any semblance of a reply he had prepared. He sank into a chair opposite her.

“Did Alice tell you?” he asked. Julia shook her head, her face flushed.

“No. Although, thanks for that, it kinda sucks that you told her and not me. I was waiting for you to tell me yourself. But seriously, Quentin? Did you really think I’d believe you were suddenly _so interested_ in all these international events you’ve always hated? We’ve lived across the hall from each other for twenty years. I _know_ you.”

“So, you’re mad at me because of Eliot?” Quentin asked.

“No, you dumbass!” she snapped. “You don’t think I knew, all those years, you were the one who kept sneaking in to look at that stupid magazine I had with his picture in it? I thought you had a crush or something, I never knew what he meant to you, or could mean to you, until I just… I _got_ it. He’s your match, Quentin.”

That wasn't something Quentin could process at the moment, so he turned to a good reliable alternative: sarcasm.

“So, what, you think I should give up my career, quit politics, and go be a fucking princess? I don’t think I’d look great in a ballgown.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it, dipshit,” she said, nudging his shoulder slightly. “I dunno. Just. Have you ever considered there might be more than one path to use what you have. More than one way to make a difference in the world?” She cast her gaze down. “It’s like… the kind of writing I always wanted to do is the kind that being a First Daughter pretty much disqualifies you from, forever. But now I’m doing this research stuff, and I’m thinking… I dunno, about grad school, and maybe… maybe there’s more than one dream for you, too.”

And just like that, a weight started slipping off of Quentin’s chest. Perhaps it wasn’t lifted entirely, but it lessened, just that bit, just enough that maybe he could breathe a little more easily. Their little circle of people who knew expanded: Jules and Alice, Margo and Penny. Zelda knew, of course, and probably Josh. It was scary, of course it was scary, but in some ways, it was also the least scared Quentin had been in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little shorter than usual for this chapter, but it would have gotten way too long otherwise! I'm really enjoying slipping in as many references as I possibly can - what do y'all think? Comments are always appreciated, pretty please :)
> 
> P.S. For your viewing pleasure: [ Louis Spencer](https://thefrisky.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Louis-Spencer.jpg), [ Viscount Althorp.](https://www.hellomagazine.com/imagenes/royalty/2018052248832/who-is-louis-spencer-lady-kitty-brother/0-241-566/louis-spencer-t.jpg)


	5. today's another day to find you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eliot gets to sing. kady gets an eyeful.

Being with Eliot was this: watching him at a polo match, suddenly more interested than he’d ever been in a ridiculous game of croquet on horseback. It was _deeply_ appreciating the way his riding pants really embraced the prince’s best assets. It was tugging him off to a secluded corner of the stables and showing him his appreciation with his mouth, then letting Eliot return the favor, putting his kneepads to a use that he was pretty sure would send everyone out there into catatonic shock.

Being with Eliot was this: using some _very_ detailed language in their emails and texts to convince him to show up at some event Quentin couldn’t even remember the name of, then holing up in a hotel room, slightly tipsy (but only slightly - Eliot was drinking less these days, even in private, and while Quentin wasn’t about to say anything, he was privately the proudest he’d ever been) and taking each other apart slowly until they had to wake up, tiptoe apart, and go back to pretending they were just the best of bros, a perfect paragon of the American-Fillorian “special relationship.”

(“I don’t think this is what they had in mind by that phrase,” Eliot dryly remarked that night, one hand tangled in Quentin’s hair while Quentin was lazily going down on him. Quentin’s answer was to use his tongue in a particular way that he knew would shut Eliot up. Judging by the suddenly sounds Eliot began making, Quentin was right, as always).

Being with Eliot was also this: realizing that, for the first time in his life, Quentin had more than just Julia and Alice in his corner. He found himself wedged into a booth in some janky European karaoke bar, he had Eliot pressed tight against one side and an arm slung around Julia next to him, Alice and Margo giggling across the table at something Penny had said. Everything seemed beautiful: the curve of Margo’s waist in her fitted purple dress, the curtain of Alice’s fair hair across her bare shoulders, Penny’s collarbone peering out from his half-unbuttoned shirt. And Eliot, of course, beautiful Eliot with his lithe elegance and casual posture and messed-up curls. 

Quentin turned to Jules and giggled, “Bisexuality is truly a rich and complex tapestry,” and it didn’t feel heavy on his tongue as Julia screeched with laughter and didn’t even bother trying to explain to the others what they were cackling about.

When they all conspired to get Eliot up onstage to belt out a song, the rest of them gleefully (and only a little drunkenly) cheered him on. Eliot caught Quentin’s eye as he started singing.

_Today’s another day to find you_  
_Shying away_  
_I’ll be coming for your love, okay?_

Quentin couldn’t help it, and, apparently, neither could the rest of them. 

_Take on me  
Take me on_

“TAKE ON ME!” the five of them shouted back, bouncing up and down as they echoed Eliot, singing along with the rest of the club at the end of the chorus, collapsing into a giggling, twelve-armed huddle when Eliot finally stumbled off the stage, blushing furiously but with a swagger like he knew he was pretty damn good at this too.

And, being with Eliot was also, apparently, like this: Eliot actually being a little bit shy in bed for once, suggesting something to Quentin that they hadn’t tried before.

“I know we...haven’t, but I have. I could. Er. Talk you through it,” he asked, twisting the rings on his fingers. Quentin snorted.

“I think I understand the mechanics,” he laughed, before turning serious. “El, you’re sure, though? I don’t want you to do anything unless you’re sure. I’m just -” Eliot cut him off with a finger on his lips, and Quentin had to resist the urge to just pull that finger into his mouth.

“Q. Sweetheart,” he said, the nickname and the endearment rolling together into a whole new name that had to be Quentin’s favorite sound, _Q-sweetheart_. “Don’t you get it by now? I’m not sure of anything, except when I’m with you.” 

And fuck if _that_ wasn’t the biggest turn-on Quentin could have imagined. He let Eliot pull his clothes off and mouth along his neck and collarbone while reaching for a condom and lube. He let Eliot grab his hand and place it exactly where he wanted, to slowly work him open. He marveled at Eliot’s open-faced bliss when he crooked his fingers _just right_, and again when he finally, _finally_ was allowed to share Eliot’s body. He watched Eliot’s face as he came undone, the way he looked so _young_ and soft and open, and it was everything Quentin needed too.

As they drifted off to sleep, forgetting that they didn’t usually _do_ sleepovers, Quentin had the sudden thought that he just might be falling a little bit in love.

****

**Q,**

**Forgive me for being so blunt to start this email, and for the language I’m about to use, but you are so fucking beautiful. I can’t stop thinking about every beautiful part of you. Your eyes and the way they get so soft when you’re happy. The crinkles at the corners of your eyes and your nose when you’re overthinking things. The way you look when you put your glasses on - whoever told you that you needed to wear contacts in public was wronger than anyone has ever been in the history of the world. Your hair when it’s down. Your hair when it’s up - you just might be the only person on whom a man-bun is not a crime against fashion humanity. Your ass, of course. Your fucking _mouth_. **

**I’m pretty sure it’s that last one that is the real problem here. How am I supposed to focus on anything else when Quentin Coldwater is out there, looking like he does, driving me to distraction? I’m pretty sure I was gone the second you called me a prick. What does that say about me? If my forefathers could see me now! Smite me down, ye spirits of olde, for I am very gay and very easily distracted by the ass of an American with eye crinkles who’s mean to me!**

**Eliot, Prince of Disappointing His Ancestors**

_his royal horniness,_

_first off, don’t apologize for calling me beautiful, because then i’d have to apologize for saying you blew my fucking mind in Budapest and i think might die if it doesn’t happen again soon. how’s that for easily distracted, huh? i could do this all day._

_seriously, though. say the word and i’ll fly to whitespire right now and pull you out of whatever boring-ass meetings you’re in and make you admit how much you love it when i call you “baby.” i’ll take you apart with my teeth. or tongue. or both. your choice, sweetheart._

_only for you,_

_quentin, first son of ungodly beauty_

**Quentin, First Son of Making Me Blush,**

**When I was studying literature at university, the palace wanted me to put out a statement on who my favorite author was. Anything I suggested was a little too… on the nose, shall we say? So they put together a list of approved options, and _still_, I couldn’t seem to pick one, even from that list, that didn’t carry some connotations that they didn’t like. George Eliot? Feminist author using a male pen name while carrying on with a married man. Jane Austen? Too poofy. Tolstoy? Too political, apparently. I thought about Jonathan Swift, just to watch them sputter, since satire is apparently dead in the year of our Lord 2020. **

**So they settled on Charles Dickens. Apparently forgetting that he was a proponent of the working class, and that Miss Havisham is pretty much a gay icon. I mean. Melodramatic jilted bride who swans about in her wedding gown? If they were going for a subtle “no homo” author, they chose poorly.**

**My favorite author is actually Oscar Wilde.**

**I know, you’re laughing right now at how damn obvious it is. Have you ever read his letters to Lord Alfred Douglas? **

**“I want to see you. It is really absurd. _I can’t live without you_. You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your boyish beauty, the bright sword-play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north and south, towards sun and moon — and, above all, yourself.”**

**Which is to say, you’d better be putting that American money where your mouth is soon, and we had better see each other so you can put your mouth other places.**

**Yours in sexual frustration,**

**El**

For a couple of weeks, Quentin’s delightful haze of _Eliot_ lingered over him at every turn. In hindsight, he thought, it’s why he was less on alert to the weird things that were happening, to Chatwin’s sudden reticence to answer his texts, to the leaks coming out of the Plover campaign about a big announcement.

So Quentin was as caught off guard as anyone when the news broke: Plover had pulled in an independent senator, all right, and it wasn’t Senator Ember, as they’d all expected — it was Chatwin. The betrayal hit them all hard, both personally and professionally, but it hit Quentin hardest of all. As a result, while the Democratic National Convention went on all around him, dealing with the formalities and the strategies, Quentin, for the first time, had less than zero interest in any of the stuff that had always been his life’s blood. Instead, he found himself at the hotel bar, ordering a whiskey and then another and trying to control the oncoming attack. He wasn’t sure if he was headed for a panic attack or a depression spiral, but either way, a drink seemed like the way to go.

“I’ll have a gin and tonic, thanks,” came a smooth and all too familiar voice next to him at the bar, and Quentin had to look up because there was _no way_ this wasn’t some stress-and-horniness-induced hallucination. But it wasn’t, and there he was, the real Eliot, discreetly dressed and looking at Q with a sheepish expression.

“I sent Penny home without me because I was worried,” he admitted. It was all Quentin could do not to throw himself into Eliot’s arms right there, heedless of who might see them. He watched Eliot sip his drink for a minute, captivated by the single drop that lingers at the corner of his mouth. 

“Get moving on that drink,” Quentin said. “I’ve got a king-sized bed upstairs that’s calling my name.”

“I’d remind you that I’m not the one who’s going to be king,” Eliot replied, “but we can work with that.” 

When they got into the room, Quentin literally dragging Eliot by his belt loops, the prince paused. “This goes against literally _everything_ my body is telling me to do, but I’m trying this thing where I’m more responsible… Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Quentin groaned. The thing was, he really did want to talk about it, and Eliot knew that.

“It’s just…” Quentin began pacing, the way he always did. Eliot perched on the foot of the bed and patiently waited for his thoughts to organize. “He was supposed to be me in twenty years, you know? I was fifteen the first time I met him, and I was just… in awe. He was everything I wanted to be. He cared about people, and doing the work because it was the _right thing to do_, not because of power or money or some shit. And now I’m sitting here thinking that son of a bitch sold out, so maybe it’s all bullshit after all, and maybe I am just a naive kid who believes in magical shit that’s not real.”

“Someone else’s choice doesn’t change who you are, Q,” Eliot said gently, reaching over a hand to entwine with Quentin’s to stop his nervous twiddling.

“I feel like… it does? I wanted to believe in people being good and doing this job because they want to do good. I wanted to be the kind of person who believes in that.” His voice cracked, and with it cracked Eliot’s heart. He pulled Quentin close, running his hands over Quentin’s shoulders, down his back, up to cradle his face and kiss him gently, almost chastely.

“You still are. Because you still care so damn much. And you are good. Most things are awful most of the time. But you, _you_ are good.”

Quentin took a breath and let it fill his lungs, let _Eliot_ fill his lungs. Somehow, Eliot had always had the gift of clarifying exactly what’s going on in that storm inside Quentin’s head.

He let Eliot push him backward onto the bed, let him kiss him until his mind went blank of everything except _Eliot, Eliot, Eliot_. And when Eliot, almost timidly, offered up a suggestion about how he could take care of Quentin for a change, Quentin let him do that too, letting Eliot’s fingers and mouth and _Eliot_ fill him up until that was the only thing he could focus on. 

“You are good,” Eliot whispered again in his ear before they drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, a pounding on his door shook Quentin out of his sleep, the most restful he’d had in weeks. And the voice on the other side of the door snapped him even further out of his lovely romantic daze and into a very real moment.

“Quentin Coldwater, it is almost seven. You have a strategy meeting in thirty minutes. I have a key, so you have literally thirty seconds to open this door or I am coming in, I don’t care _how_ naked you are.” Kady didn’t ask, she _told._

Quentin groaned as he realized that he was still completely naked, and a quick glance at the still-sleeping body pressed flush against his back revealed that Eliot, too, was very, very naked. 

“Oh, fuck me,” Quentin swore, shaking Eliot awake.

“Thought I did already,” Eliot slurred, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Q, baby, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but Daddy needs his beauty-”

“Fucking _shit_,” Quentin cursed, hopping up and trying to rouse Eliot too. “Get up, get _up!_”

“I can _hear_ you in there, Coldwater. I swear to God-”

Kady’s voice had taken on the _I-mean-it_ tone, and there was no way Eliot was going to get dressed and properly hidden in time. Grabbing a shirt and a pair of boxers off the floor and tossing them at Eliot, Quentin shoved him at the nearest door, which happened to be his closet.

“Get in there,” he ordered. Eliot raised a single, perfectly groomed eyebrow.

“Quite,” he said delicately.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, we can unpack all the symbolism later, just _get in!_” Quentin hissed, and for once in his life, Eliot obeyed without question. Quentin had just barely managed to get his own boxers and T-shirt on before Kady barged in. Her gaze swept around the room, taking in the rumpled sheets, the two pillows with obvious indentations on them, Quentin’s wrecked hair.

“What the _fuck_, Coldwater?” she seethed. “Have you learned _nothing?_ Or is your dick _completely_ out of control? Please tell me you’ve at least gotten an NDA taken care of.”

“We don’t need an NDA, Kady, trust me on this,” Quentin pleaded. 

“Where is she, Quentin? Tell me right now.” As the last words left Kady’s mouth, the closet door shuddered and Eliot fell out in a heap on the floor, with a pair of boxers (Quentin’s, he noted now), barely tugged up over his hips. As far as an effective visual went, Quentin thought, it was pretty much unbeatable.

Kady’s eyes flicked between the two men, both of whom were now flushed beet red, Quentin crossing his arms until he was almost hugging himself.

“Oh my God,” Kady said faintly. “Did _I_ do this? I never thought, when I made you-”

“Er,” Eliot coughed politely, “if it helps at all, I think it was… rather inevitable? At least for me.” And damn if that didn’t send a shot of _something_ through Quentin’s heart, even as embarrassed and frustrated as he was right then.

“Okay, there are a lot of questions that I have a feeling I neither want nor need the answers to,” Kady began, “so let’s start with what I do need to know. How long has this been going on?”

The two men exchanged a slightly guilty look.

“Uh… New Year’s?” Quentin tried, his voice going up at the end even though it wasn’t a question. 

“_New Year’s?_” Kady repeated in disbelief as several things slotted into place. “Oh my God, that’s why you’ve been volunteering for all those events. I thought you were getting into international relations or something.”

“I mean, technically -”

“If you finish that sentence, your mother is going to have to bail me out of jail,” Kady threatened, without any real malice but with a massive headache building. 

“Please don’t tell Mom,” Quentin begged. Kady glared at him.

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me? You’re literally putting your dick in _foreign royalty_, who is _a man_, at one of the _biggest political events before the election_, in a hotel _full of reporters_. This is a fucking manifestation of _every one_ of my stress dreams, and now you’re asking me, all casual, to _not_ tell the president about it?”

“Um.” Quentin struggled to string a sentence together. “It’s just. I haven’t actually. Come out. To her. Yet.”

Kady stared at him for a minute, apparently calculating something. Then she let out a massive sigh.

“Okay. Here’s the deal. We literally _cannot_ deal with this right now, and your mother has more important things to handle than her son’s quarter-life NATO bisexuality crisis. So, no, I won’t tell her. But the _second_ the convention is over, you need to. Got it?”

She glanced back at the bed, where Eliot had taken a seat and was looking faintly nauseated and terrified.

“Would it make a difference if I told you not to see each other again?” Quentin looked back at Eliot, still rumpled from their night and somehow Quentin’s favorite face in the world. They shared a glance, and said all that needed to be said.

“No,” Quentin said. Just that, just _no_, because that was the truth.

“I figured,” Kady said, resigned. She pointed between them. “This is what’s gonna happen. _You_, Coldwater, are going to get dressed and be in your strategy meeting on time, no matter what it takes to make that happen. And _you_,” she said, pointing at Eliot now, “are going to scurry back to Fillory and lie low, and if you cause any more headaches for me… Well. I’m not afraid of the crown. Am I clear?”

When they nodded, in almost comical unison, she narrowed her eyes at them one more time before huffing and storming out of the room. 

"Well." Eliot cleared his throat delicately. "That went well."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was a lot of fun - some of the most fun parts of rwrb with a queliot twist. thank you so much to everyone who has been leaving kudos and commenting - it makes me so happy to hear what you think :)


	6. i could almost except you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> letters, part 2.

Quentin thought he’d already had the most awkward conversations he’d ever have with his mother. Turned out, he was so very, very wrong. Coming out to her, saying the word “bisexual” out loud to only the fourth person in his life, wasn’t even the hard part - although it was plenty difficult. She took it in stride, even the bit about his cladestine gay lover being the Prince of Fillory, and, like all things, she came prepared.

And “prepared,” apparently, meant “A PowerPoint That Will Make My Son Want To Crawl Into A Cave And Never Emerge.” Quentin was prepared for the safe sex talk. He was _not_ prepared for a slideshow about the “diplomatic gray area” of dicking down (and getting dicked down by) a member of the royal family of one of America’s closest allies. 

That wasn’t the biggest bombshell, though.

“I’m what?” Quentin repeated, not able to believe his ears.

“You’re off the campaign. I’m sorry, sweetie. You know I am. But there can’t be any distractions right now. Not even one. A _whiff_ of any secrets and Plover will be all over it, and you and I both know that it’s not going to be good for this country - or for global politics - if Plover ends up in the White House. This is bigger than me, bigger than your burgeoning sexuality, bigger than any of us.”

She fixed him with a gaze that he couldn’t quite read.

“Here’s the thing. I trust you. I learned my lesson the hard way that I can’t - I _shouldn’t_ \- be the mother who tries to tell you to be anything you’re not. But this… this is a really big fucking deal. This isn’t one of your college classmates or a colleague on the campaign or a family friend. You’re putting a lot on the line here, for yourself even more that for this campaign. I know you’re young, but this is a forever decision. Even if you don’t stay with him forever, if people find out, the story stays with you forever. So you need to figure out if you feel forever about him, and if you don’t, you need to cut it out _now._”

*****

_el,_

_i think i might go insane. ever since i got booted off the campaign i’ve just been watching cable news (which was a really, really bad idea, holy fuck) and wandering the halls like your very own miss havisham. see, i can do the literary references too!_

_seriously, is this how you feel at the palace all the time, man? because it really fucking sucks. i’m thinking of going off my meds, just to ease the boredom._

_don’t worry, sweetheart, i won’t. i promise._

_anyway, i’m going through all my old college work, because what else should i do other than remind myself of a time when i was useful and hardworking and productive? i found this old analysis i did of alexander hamilton’s wartime correspondence, and, el, i think he might have been bi? his letters to his friend john laurens are almost as romantic as the ones he wrote to his wife, and they’re all signed “yrs” or “affectionately yrs” or even “yrs for ever.”_

_why does literally no one talk about the possibility of one of america’s founding fathers having been bi? (except for chernow, which is great, btw - see attached bibliography). i mean, yeah, i do know why, but still._

_anyway, i found this part of a letter that he wrote to laurens, and it made me think of you. and me too, i guess._

_“The truth is I am an unlucky honest man, that speak my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you...”_

_thinking about history makes me wonder how i’ll fit into it one day. you too. and i also just sort of wish people still wrote like that._

_history, huh? bet we could make some._

_i have no eloquence like hamilton’s, so here’s what i’ve got: peaches and plums, motherfucker._

_affectionately yrs, slowly going mad,_

_Q, First Son of Ignoring Historical Heteronormativity_

**Q, First Son of Unexpectedly Sexy History,**

**First off, I feel you should know that the phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me. Yes, including _that_. It’s just so… you. **

**Every time you mention your slow decay inside the White House, I can’t help feeling it’s my fault, and I feel absolutely shit about it. I should have known better than to show up like that, and I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I know how much that job meant to you. I feel it only fair to put the option on the table for things to slow down. If you wanted less of me and more of the work - the uncomplicated things - I truly would understand, and I’m not being self-sacrificing here.**

**In any case, would you believe it if I told you I actually have done a bit of reading on Hamilton for a number of reasons? First, I am a card-carrying theatre gay and was as obsessed with _Hamilton_ as the rest of the world. Second, he was a brilliant writer. And third, some saucy minx once tried to impugn my royal virtue up against a painting of him, and in the halls of memory, some things demand context.**

**(speaking of which: peaches and plums to you too).**

**Are you suggesting some sort of revolutionary role-play scenario? I regret to inform you that we Fillorians did the whole rebellion thing a century earlier than you lot, and much more elegantly, too, so I’m afraid it wouldn’t be historically accurate enough. More’s the pity. **

**Or are you suggesting you’d rather exchange heated letters by candlelight?**

**Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, your hair falling across your cheek, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I’ve just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, as if I’d felt it for fifty years and still hadn’t had enough, and it makes every bone in my body ache with the weight of those unlived years? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?**

**I think perhaps Hamilton said it best in a letter to Eliza:**

**“You engross my thoughts too entirely to allow me to think anything else. You not only employ my mind all day, but you intrude on my sleep. I meet you in every dream and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.”**

**If you did, by chance, take that option at the beginning of this email, I really hope you haven’t gotten this far and read all my rambling.**

**Regards,**

**Hopelessly Romantic Heir Prince Eliot the Idiotic**

_el,_

_don’t be stupid. no part of this will ever be uncomplicated. that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having._

_by the way, you should be a writer. You_ are _a writer._

_Even after all of this, I still always feel like I want to know more about you. Who is this person who knows about Hamilton and writes like this and how, how, was I so entirely wrong about him for so long? Does that sound crazy? I know, it probably does sound crazy, but, like… why the fuck not?_

_I wanna see you again, and soon. i keep rereading that one paragraph over and over again. you know which one. i want your body and i want the rest of you too. also i want to get out of this fucking house. watching jules and alice do campaign stuff and tv appearances without me is torture. _

_speaking of getting out of the house: we have this annual thing at my dad’s lake house in texas. whole long weekend off the grid. you wanna come? i kind of can’t stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty and stuck without hair products out there in the country. it’s the weekend after next. if josh can coordinate with kady or someone about flying you into austin, we can pick you up from there. _

_say yes? i mean, you don’t have to, and you probably have some other plans already, and that’s totally fine._

_but. like. say yes._

_yrs,_

_Q_

_p.s. tho i long for the actual sunlight contact between us i miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me. allen ginsburg to peter orlovksy, 1958._

**Q,**

**I’m ruminating on the formation of identity and your question about where a person like me comes from, and as best as I can explain it, here’s a story for you:**

**Once upon a time, there was a young prince who was born in a castle. His mother was a princess scholar and his father was a handsome and feared swordsman. He came from a long line of princes, thirty, forty ancestors deep, and yet there had never been a prince like him: born with his heart outside of his body.**

**When he was small, his family would smile and laugh and assure him it would fix itself one day. But he grew older, and it didn’t, and all the while, he kept thinking about how it was something that needed to be fixed. And on top of that, every day, the family’s fear grew that the people of the kingdom - or of the world - would notice and turn their backs on the prince and his whole family. His grandmother the queen took every opportunity to remind him of generations of princes who had been born properly and whole.**

**For a time, it didn’t bother the prince too much, because he learned something important: that exposed heart meant he was also exposed to the things the rest of his family never was. He heard tales of the most beautiful things in the world and pursued them. But then his father was struck down, and the family vowed it would not happen to another of their own. And so when the queen sent a suit of full armor to the young prince, his grieving mother accepted the gift and taught him how to armor himself, fearful that her son’s open heart would be torn from his body all too easily.**

**So the prince wore it for many years. He acquired new shields, new swords, new and improved chain mail, until he himself believed that he was, simply this suit of armor, and that was all he could ever be. And when he met courtiers who somehow saw his beating heart through all the armor, he tucked himself further and further away from the beauty of the world in his wine and his jousts and his increasingly complex layers of armor.**

**Until one day he met the most devastatingly beautiful boy, part of a nearby kingdom’s envoy, who said the most horrible things to him and made him feel alive for the first in years. And this boy turned out to be a magician, too. Not the kind who conjured flashy sparks or meddled in potions and poisons, but one who could mend everything he came in contact with. Even though he shattered the prince’s suit of armor into tiny, tiny pieces, he mended the thing that mattered. You know what it was. That’s when the prince finally could see clearly again, and the beauty of all life was suddenly before him.**

**Anyway, I’m in for the lake house. Does this mean I’ll be meeting your father, darling?**

**Missing you,**

**El**

**P.S. “I’m making it all right here, but I miss you, your arms & nakedness & holding each other — life seems emptier without you, the soulwarmth isn’t around. . . .” Allen Ginsburg to Peter Orlovsky, 1958**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this one is a little shorter than usual, but bear with me, #drama is coming. i really loved getting to adapt the letters from rwrb in this section and make them very queliot. as always, let me know what you think? and thank you to everyone who keeps reading, commenting, and coming back for more! you make this writer very happy.


	7. you have a choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the lake house brings up a lot of things, and neither quentin nor eliot is prepared.

His mother’s words about “feeling forever” were echoing in Quentin’s head as he and Eliot piled into the car, along with Alice and Julia, to head to the lake house. They echoed in his head when he introduced Eliot to his dad, and Ted didn’t even flinch at being introduced to his son’s new “friend” who also happened to be male and, oh yeah, _royal_. And they echoed in his head as he watched out the kitchen window while making dinner, watching Jules and Alice jousting with pool noodles while a tipsy, shirtless Eliot gestured madly in some attempt at judging the match. Q couldn’t help smiling at the sight of his three favorite people in the world, laughing and goofing off and just being people who loved each other (and yeah, that was a word popping up more and more in his head lately, _shit_).

“So, you wanna talk about it?” Ted’s mellow voice startled Quentin out of his reverie. “About Rupert?”

“Not unless you have any idea what that fucker is thinking,” Quentin bit out, chopping the red pepper in front of him with a little extra gusto. Ted had been the one to support Rupert, way back at the start of his career, so he got that same bite of betrayal Q felt. But, like all things Ted Coldwater, he had a more levelheaded approach to even a major hurt like this.

“I don’t have anything kind to say about him, you can be sure of that,” Ted said, picking up the ladle to stir the sauce. “But… I don’t know. I can’t imagine, after all this time, he’d put himself in the same room with Christopher Plover without a damn good reason. I just don’t know what it is.”

Quentin wished, sometimes, that he could have his father’s calm and steady sense of decency. Where Q was always quick to find the flaws in everyone (most of all in himself), Ted had the opposite outlook: slow to judgment, even slower to anger. Quentin wanted to ask him how he managed it, how he kept such an even keel when everything around them was chaos.

“Why’d you pick him?” he asked instead. “I remember his first campaign. There were lots of people who would have been great politicians and would’ve been easier to elect. Why him?”

“You mean, why’d I roll the dice on the gay one?” Ted chuckled.

“I mean…” Quentin sputtered. “I wasn’t going to be that blunt about it, but, yeah.”

“Rupert ever tell you about his family? His parents kicked him out when he was sixteen.”

Quentin winced in sympathy, even as he hated himself for feeling sympathy for the traitorous bastard who’d caused him so many sleepless nights. “I knew he’d had a hard time, but he never really specified.”

“Yeah, his parents didn’t take things so well. He had a rough couple of years, but those battles made him tough. And I guess… It’s like when Kady showed up at your mom’s office and laid out everything shady from her past and said she wanted to prove every one of those bastards wrong. You know a fighter when you see one.”

There was a pause as both men turned back to their cooking.

“You know, Curly Q,” Ted began, not making eye contact, “That summer, I sent you to work on his campaign because I genuinely believed you were the best point man I had. But also… I thought you could learn a lot from him too. You’ve got a lot in common.”

And, _okay_, they were apparently doing this now. Quentin set down his knife and turned to his father, who was still methodically stirring.

“I gotta say,” Ted mused, looking out the window, “I thought a prince would be more of a candy-ass.”

Quentin laughed. “I thought the same thing. But El’s tougher than he looks,” he said, trying hard not to let too much pride seep into his voice.

“Well, he’s better than most of the idiots Jules has brought home,” Ted said, and by now, his intention was clear, and Quentin’s nerves were back in full force. “Better than most of the girls you’ve brought around too. Jury’s still out if he’s better than Alice, though - she’s always been my favorite.” At Quentin’s alarmed stare, Ted just chuckled. “What? You’re not as subtle as you think, Curly Q.”

“I don’t know, I just… didn’t know if you’d need to have, like, a come-to-Jesus moment about this or something? I know you’re, like… cool with it, in general, but I know it’s different when it’s your own kid,” Q sputtered, trying to wrap his head around this total nonchalance.

“Hey.” Ted put a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “Not to me, it isn’t. Does your mom know?”

“Yeah, I told her a couple weeks ago. She doesn’t care that I’m bi. Although there was a PowerPoint. Also, she fired me. And told me I need to figure out if how I feel about him is worth the risk.”

“And the verdict is?”

Quentin groaned. “Please do not ask me now. I am on _vacation_ with my sister and my best friend and my boyfriend and all I want to do is get drunk and eat barbeque in peace.”

That got a laugh out of Ted, who dismissed Quentin to get the ribs going. As it turned out, ribs were the perfect choice for the night, as Quentin discovered - with no small amount of glee - that the perfectly mannered Eliot had never actually eaten messy barbeque with his hands before, and this time, it was Quentin’s turn to teach Eliot a thing or two. After dinner, Ted brought out his old guitar, and they passed it back and forth between them. Jules offered up a country ballad, and, to everyone’s surprise, Eliot plucked the guitar from her hands and softly strummed out “Let It Be,” singing along in a voice that was rougher and quieter than that long-ago night out, but no less beautiful to Quentin.

Later in the evening, Quentin stood on the edge of the dock, looking out over the lake as Julia took over again, taking Alice’s request for “Falling Slowly” on the condition that Alice sing the harmonies with her. Eliot quietly came up and, without a word, put an arm around him. Behind them, they could hear Alice and Julia harmonizing, _raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice, you’ve made it now_, and the breeze rustled through the trees, sending the water into ripples upon ripples, and Eliot lowered his head to press a kiss to Quentin’s lips, and Quentin came to the startling realization that this was what love felt like.

****  
Quentin woke up surprisingly early the next morning, sliding out of bed and slipping into the kitchen, careful not to wake Eliot in the upper bunk (hey, it was his family house and they weren’t _complete_ heathens). He went out onto the porch, gazing out onto the early morning sun’s reflection on the lake, listening to the near-complete silence, and felt that kernel of certainty that had planted last night begin to grow.

Away from DC, away from all the politics and the stress and, well, the real world, it was so much easier to understand. Whenever Quentin had had really bad periods, this place had soothed him and helped bring him back to himself. He could be himself here, no questions asked, and there was something so warmly reassuring about that kind of self-understanding.

And, for the first time in a long time, he really did understand. He loved Eliot. He’d loved Eliot for years. He’d loved Eliot when he hated Eliot. He’d definitely loved Eliot since they’d been tangled up together on the floor of a hospital closet, or since they’d awkwardly managed a non-hostile interaction in the kitchen of a palace apartment in the middle of the night. He loved Eliot, and it should scare him, but it didn’t - all he could think of was _why the fuck not?_ and _what took me so long?_

They spent the day making food (and getting yelled at by Julia and Alice for unsanitary food handling after getting a little too into a kiss in the kitchen) and heading out on the sailboat and taking pictures to send to Penny and swimming and playing music and yelling about politics and and and and.

Quentin lay awake that night, half-drunk on beer and half on _feelings_ and thought about… well, everything. He thought about growing up and summers here, about how things used to make so much sense and how coming here helped bring order to the things that weren’t making sense. He thought about how he wore the key to his childhood home around his neck, but how he didn’t even know if the boy who used that key would recognize the man laying here now. 

“El, you awake?” he whispered.

“For you, always,” came the reply, even if it was tinged with a sleepy, affectionate annoyance.

They snuck out of the house, past Quentin’s family and Eliot’s PPOs, and scurried almost silently until they reached the pier. Eliot’s laugh - his _real_ laugh, not his practiced, public amusement - rings out into the night air, and Quentin, who had spent so long feeling like some depression monster was living in his chest, felt the exact opposite: as if some being of pure joy had taken up residence in his heart, ready to let him float away or soar or some other cheesy metaphor. Instead of pondering it, Quentin stripped quickly, grinning at Eliot’s raised eyebrow and jumping into the water without a single word.

“You’re a menace,” Eliot grumbled, but he followed suit, neatly folding his clothes on the dock. His insistence on being so meticulous gave Quentin time to drink him in, the long, languid lines of him in the moonlight, the tilt of his head, the soft shadows, the tiny smile, the tousled hair. He dove in with infuriatingly perfect form.

“Can’t you do _anything_ without being so goddamn extra?” Quentin asked, splashing Eliot to make his point. Eliot grinned, as if nothing in the world made him happier than Quentin’s needling. They chased each other around, all limbs and laughter, until Quentin finally managed to catch Eliot around the waist, pinning them together, pressing his mouth to all of his favorite places on Eliot’s body that he could reach. He wanted to stay tangled up with Eliot forever, map out every freckle and name constellations after them. 

“Hey,” he said, pulling back to smile at Eliot just in time to watch a single drop of water fall from his curls onto his cheek and slide down the curve of his neck.

“Hi,” Eliot replied, matching his grin, and Quentin thought with absolute clarity, _Goddammit, I love him._ It kept coming back to him, and every time he looked at Eliot, it got harder to not say it.

“I’m glad you came this weekend,” he said instead. “It’s been so intense lately I… I guess I really needed this.” Eliot’s fingers play along Quentin’s side, fingering along his ribs as if they were piano keys.

“You carry so much, Q,” he said gently, and for once, Quentin didn’t argue the point, just agreed.

“So I’ve been thinking about after the inauguration,” he said, crossing his fingers that he wasn’t jinxing his mom’s campaign by actually making future plans. “Like, next year maybe, we could come back out here, just the two of us. The election will be over, I’ll be able to, you know, _breathe_ again. I’ll cook in the morning and we’ll swim all day and never have to put clothes on and make out on the dock and it won’t matter if the neighbors see.”

“Well, it will matter. It will always matter.” Quentin pulled back a little, not expecting that response. 

“You know what I mean, El,” he said, confused. 

“Where are you going with all this?” Eliot asked. Quentin took a deep breath, trying to figure out a way to say all the things he needed to say without screwing up.

“I used to think… I used to think that I could just run and run and run and that would make up for all the things that were missing and all the broken parts of me. I thought, if I could imagine the person I wanted to be, and channel all that anxiety and _bullshit_ towards reaching that point, I could rewire myself. But I never really learned how to just be in the present instead of some imaginary future, you know?” Quentin paused, trying to gauge Eliot’s reaction. “And where I am is… Here. With you. And I’m thinking maybe I should start trying to live in the now and just… feel. Whatever it is I feel.”

Eliot didn’t say anything.

“Baby.” Quentin took Eliot’s face in his hands, a perfect mirror image of how Eliot loved pressing his hands to Quentin’s face. “El, I-”

All of a sudden, Eliot shifted, ducking out of Quentin’s arms and into the water before re-emerging a few feet away, splashing his arms around.

“Shit, what are these things?” Eliot asked, waving his arms around at a bug that landed on him. Quentin managed a laugh. “They’re awful. I’m going to catch some exotic American plague, and then what?”

“Sorry, what?”

“You know, Charleton is the heir and I’m the spare, and if that prissy bastard nerves himself into a heart attack before age forty and I’ve got malaria…”

“All hail High Queen Margo the Destroyer,” Quentin supplied, letting out a laugh that wasn’t quite whole-hearted. 

“At any rate, I’m exhausted,” Eliot said lightly, clambering out of the water and starting to get dressed. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll head to bed.”

Quentin didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, just watching Eliot’s departing figure. A twinge settled in Quentin’s stomach, familiar and dark and aching, that sensation of something being _wrong_ that had haunted him for so many years. And, as always, he was too afraid to ask what it is, out of sheer terror that the answer would be even worse than the horrors his mile-a-minute mind can conjure up. That’s the downside of allowing love into this, he realized: if something goes wrong, like it usually does, he doesn’t know how to bounce back. For the first time since Eliot kissed him so suddenly and so perfectly on New Year’s, Quentin feels adrift. What if this never was Quentin’s decision to make? What if he got so wrapped up in the wonder of _Eliot_ that he forgot that good things don’t tend to happen for him, and even when they do, they never last?

By the time he got back to the house, Eliot was already in his bunk, back turned to the room, apparently asleep. And Quentin, as always, chose not to push it, just climbed into his own bed and curled in on himself as tightly as possible, hoping for quiet dreams if not kind ones.

In the morning, Eliot was gone.

Quentin woke to find his bunk empty, bed made, and no sign of him anywhere inside or outside. He only found a note in the kitchen.

**Quentin,**

**Had to go early - family matter. Left with the PPOs. Didn’t want to wake you. Thank you for everything.**

**xx**

It was the last message Eliot sent him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did promise drama, right? please let me know what you thought! i apologize for not being the most regular updater, being a working adult is a bitch sometimes.


	8. not one of those who can easily hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin confronts Eliot.

Kady nearly refused to secure a car for Quentin after he bailed out to the airport without warning, but she relented, and it was a good thing, since it was pouring rain by the time he and Zelda were climbing out of their discreet car at the back gates of Whitespire.

Someone had clearly tipped off Josh, because he was waiting for them at the door to Eliot’s apartments, wrapped in a dark coat and as cheerful and inscrutable as always.

“Mr. Coldwater, how lovely to see you,” he said, and if Quentin hadn’t been so angry and amped-up right then, he might have noticed that Josh actually sounded sincere in his greeting.

“Move, Josh,” was all he said instead. Josh’s expression didn’t change.

“Ms. Orloff-Diaz called ahead to let us know to expect you. As you might have surmised by the ease with which you were able to get through our gates. We thought it might be best if any… ah… fireworks, went off in private.”

“Move,” Quentin repeated. Josh grinned. 

“You realize, of course, that it’s well within my power to have you removed from the grounds? It’s quite late, and no member of the royal family has requested your presence.”

“Bullshit. I need to see Eliot,” Quentin snapped.

“I’m afraid you can’t do that. The prince doesn’t wish to be disturbed.” And that was it, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Quentin stepped back, eyeing the window he knew was Eliot’s.

“Disturbed, huh? I’ll show you disturbed.” Backing up, he turned his head up towards the window and started shouting.

“Eliot! You motherfucker, I know you’re there! Get your ass down here, you little shit!”

“You’re making a scene,” Josh observed, his chill demeanor just the slightest bit ruffled.

“You think?” Quentin shouted. “How ‘bout I just keep making a scene, huh? Let’s see which one of the papers shows up first! My bet’s on-”

“For Christ’s sake, Quentin, what are you doing?”

Quentin froze, halfway through his latest shout, because Eliot appeared, standing in the doorway behind Josh, barefoot, stubbly, and in loose sweats. He looked more beautiful than anything Quentin had ever seen, even if he looked incredibly unimpressed by Quentin’s outburst. Q wanted to say something, anything, wanted to tell him what he hadn’t said at the lakehouse, wanted to cross over to him and never let go.

“Tell him to let me in,” he said instead. A nod from Eliot, and Josh stepped aside, and Quentin sloshed into the palace, leaving a little trail of rainwater behind him. Eliot didn’t even look at him, just headed up the stairs, leaving Quentin with no option other than to follow him up the staircase.

“I’d rather not do this where we might be overheard,” Eliot finally spoke over his shoulder. Quentin scoffed.

“Do _what?_ What are we gonna do, El?” Eliot went stiff at the nickname, and Quentin cursed himself for letting it slip out. Eliot let them both into his bedroom before turning to Quentin, and up close, Quentin could see the bags under his eyes and the redness around them.

“I’m going to let you say what you need to say,” Eliot said coldly, “so then you can leave.”

“What, and then we’re _over?_” Quentin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. When Eliot broke their gazes and didn’t answer him, he felt a familiar tightness in his chest, like something was slowly squeezing the air out of him. He also thinks he would like to cry.

“_Seriously?_” is all he could muster, shoving a dripping wet lock of hair out of his face. “What the _ever-living fuck_ is going on? A week ago it was emails about how much you missed me and the goddamn ‘beauty of all life’ and _meeting my dad_ and then you fucking _ghost_ me? Maybe _you_ can lock up your feelings into nice tidy little rooms, but I can’t, Eliot!”

Eliot moved further away from him to lean against the ornate mantelpiece above the fireplace.

“You really think I don’t care as much as you?” he asked, low and soft.

“You’re sure as hell acting like it.”

“I haven’t got the time to explain to you all the ways you’re _so very wrong_, so if you could just-”

“No, if _you_ could just stop being an obtuse, repressed fucking asshole for like, twenty seconds?”

“Oh, I’m so glad you flew here to _insult me_,” Eliot snapped, something of their old enmity sparking to life in him.

“_I fucking love you_, okay?” Quentin yelled, and there it was, no going back now. Eliot went completely still against the mantlepiece, except for the muscle in his jaw that kept twitching. “Goddammit. You don’t make it easy. But I’m in love with you. And I want to be with you. So… why the _fuck_ not?”

A small _click_ drew Quentin’s attention. Eliot took off his signet ring and set it down on the mantelpiece and was gazing into the fire, mindlessly rubbing at the spot where his ring had been.

“Q,” he said, and if the nickname gave Quentin hope, the look on Eliot’s face when he finally turned around nearly crushed him. “Don’t. This is the entire goddamned reason. I can’t do this, you _know_ why, please don’t make me say it.”

Quentin felt his eyes start to fill up with tears.

“So you’re not even gonna _try_ to be happy?” he asked. “Because, let me tell you, as someone who’s basically got a fucking PhD in misery-”

“For Christ’s sake, I’ve been trying to be happy my entire, useless life. My birthright is a country, not happiness,” Eliot said, more bitter than Quentin had ever heard him. Quentin’s heart sank.

“So, what was this, then? Just a good way to pass the time? Get your dick sucked by someone who already knows the ins and outs of NDAs?” Quentin knew he was being hurtful but he himself was hurting too badly to care. “Was this _never_ going to be real to you, or-” The end of his sentence stuck in his throat, unable to get out.

Eliot finally snapped.

“You really are a _complete_ idiot if you believe that,” he hissed, clenching his hands. “When have I _ever_, since the first moment I touched you, pretended to be anything other than completely in love with you?” The word hung in the air. “You at least have the _option_ to not choose a public life eventually, but I will live and die in these palaces and in this family, so don’t you dare come to me and question if I _love_ you when it’s the thing that could ruin _everything_.”

Quentin wanted to move towards Eliot, but his feet wouldn’t obey. So he stood, awkward, just watching as Eliot gazed down at the carpet rather than meet his eyes.

“It wasn’t supposed to be an issue,” Eliot continued. “I thought I could have some part of you, and just never say _it_, and you’d never have to know, and then one day you’d get tired of me and leave because I’m…” He waved his hand up and down, gesturing at himself. “Well, you know. Anyway. I never thought I’d be faced with a choice I can’t make. And that day, at the lake house… Someone good and true… _loved me_. And he went out on a limb. And, yeah, it was a little crazy, but I knew. I _knew_ this was a moment that really mattered and I just… snuffed it out,” he admitted, disgust creeping into his voice. 

“Well. I _do_ love you. I do,” Quentin said. “And you _can_ choose. What do you want? Not your grandmother, or your brother, or any of the fucking courtiers buzzing around every corner. _You_, El.”

“I want you.” The words were simple, falling from Eliot’s lips like he’d been waiting to say them all along. 

“Then fucking _have_ me,” Quentin nearly shouted.

“But I don’t want _this!_ Don’t you see?” Eliot actually did yell, his eyes red with tears and face flushed with anger. “I’m not like you. I don’t get to be _reckless_, not anymore, not ever. I can love you and want you and still not want a life where I’ll be picked over constantly. You want that life, a life in politics, under the microscope. It doesn’t make me a coward.”

Quentin wondered, not for the first time, if that was the life he wanted after all. It seemed like a good moment to bring it up, but then something else occurred to him.

“Wait, wait. Hold up. You think I want _your_ life? You think I want to be like… like Martha? Fucking gilded cage and perfectly tailored clothes and a smile that never actually reaches the eyes and no opinions allowed?”

“Then what are we even doing here?” Eliot asked. “Why are we fighting when the lives we have to lead are completely incompatible? It’s not me, and it’s not you, not when we have a choice. Shouldn’t we just… I don’t know. File it away under beautiful things to remember when life gets hard?”

“Because you don’t want that either!” Quentin insisted. “And neither do I. You don’t want any of this bullshit. Look, I might not be a fucking royal, but I do know what it’s like to be born into a family that defines your whole life, okay?” Quentin moved tentatively into Eliot’s space, and he let him. “You’re like me. You want to take the hand you were dealt - and it’s a shitty hand sometimes, I know - and leave the world better than you found it. Think about it… we _work_. We work _because_ we already understand all that shitty other stuff, like practically no one else on earth does. Why can’t we figure out a way to do all that together?”

“Q, when I’m afraid, I run away,” Eliot said, matter-of-fact. “I want to be braver, and it’s because I learned it from you. But I don’t think I can.”

Quentin turned away from him, stepping back like he’d been slapped.

“Fine. Fuck this. I’ll leave.”

“Good.”

“I’ll leave,” Quentin said, pushing back into Eliot’s space, closer than before, “when you tell me to leave.”

“_Q_.” Eliot exhaled. Quentin was close enough now to feel the puff of breath from Eliot’s lips.

“Tell me you’re done with me. I’ll go right now, get back on that plane. That’s it. You can live here in your castle forever and write some really sad poetry about it. Whatever you want. Just say the words.”

“Fuck you,” Eliot said, voice cracking as he grabbed onto Quentin’s collar, and in that moment, Quentin knew he was going to love this self-loathing, stubborn, terrified asshole forever.

“Tell me to leave,” he repeated, this time allowing a tiny hint of a smile to creep onto his lips. The next moment, he registered being shoved backward and, in an instant, he was pinned against a wall and Eliot was on him, pushing into Quentin’s mouth, tangling his hands in Quentin’s still-damp hair. They grabbed at each other against the wall for a few moments until Eliot whirled them around, walked Quentin backwards to the bed without breaking from his lips, and shoved him onto the mattress so hard he bounced on impact.

When he looked back up at Eliot, who loomed above him, Quentin realized Eliot was crying. That gave him pause, because he genuinely didn’t know how to interpret this. Was this meant to be some point of no return towards the future, or was it one last time? He didn’t know if he could go through with it if it was the second one, but he knew, more than anything, that he couldn’t bear to leave this room without having this - without having _him_.

“C’mere,” he said, reaching out a hand. 

He fucked Eliot slow and deep, and if this was going to be the last time, it was going to have to be enough to last them fifty, sixty, seventy years. Quentin was a complete cliche, tumbling around on silken bedsheets while he and Eliot took each other apart, but he couldn’t even be bothered to care because he was so, stupidly, completely in love with Eliot, and Eliot loved him too, and for at least this one night, they didn’t have to pretend otherwise.

Eliot came with his face half-buried in Quentin’s shoulder, lips brushing across the scar Quentin had showed him once from when he’d fallen and cut it open on lawn equipment when he was ten. Quentin tried to memorize every detail, every lash on Eliot’s eyes, every curl on his head, the curve of his mouth. He begged his tired, perpetually uncooperative brain to listen to him just this once and _don’t miss this, don’t forget this. He’s too important._

Quentin woke up alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. I swear on Sorrow and Sorrow that it's going to start looking up soon.


	9. a life in the day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> on art and myth and how some things stay the same even when they're totally different.

As Quentin tried to reorient himself around everything that had happened last night - and everything that might happen now that it was morning - he took in his surroundings. His eyes zeroed in on the mantelpiece, where Eliot’s ring still sat. Hope bloomed in his chest.

That hope sparked into flame when the door opened and Eliot himself walked in, barefoot and in sweats, balancing a pair of mugs.

“Your hair in the mornings is truly a wonder to behold,” Eliot said, leaning over to hand one of the mugs to Quentin. He took it, staring up at Eliot with a mix of hope and caution. _Good things don’t happen to you_, a voice hissed in his head. _You don’t deserve them._

“You seem… less pissy,” was what he said instead. Eliot choked on his tea.

“Me? You could talk. As I recall, I wasn’t the one who started throwing a fit on the palace lawn in the middle of the rain in the middle of the night - really, I thought _I_ was the drama queen in this relationship,” Eliot commented, the lightness of his tone at odds with the deliberate words he chose. Quentin looked up.

“Hey,” Eliot said, and he leaned forward to press a soft kiss on Quentin’s lips. When they separated, he couldn’t help letting his hand linger on Quentin’s cheek; the other man leaned into it almost automatically.

“Where were you?” Quentin murmured, trying not to let his worry color his voice. Eliot slipped off his shoes and clambered up on the bed to lean back next to Quentin.

“I went for a walk, to clear my head a bit. And I ran into Charlton. And we… chatted for a bit. He was totally oblivious about your little… visit, last night. But he kept going on about Martha and estate management and all the hypothetical heirs they’re working on in very meticulous fashion, even though Charlton hates children, and suddenly it was like… everything you said last night came back to me.”

“What I said?”

“Charlton is… fine. He’s not unhappy, he’s following ‘the plan’, and it’s all perfectly fine. A lifetime of _fine_.” Eliot’s hand had found its way onto Quentin’s leg, where he’d been rolling the hem of his boxers between his fingers. For the first time, he looked right into Quentin’s eyes. “That’s not enough for me.”

“It’s… it’s not?” Quentin asked, heart thudding desperately. Eliot snaked a hand around Quentin’s neck, a familiar and solid touch.

“I’m not good at saying these things. You’re much braver than I am when it comes to putting your heart on your sleeve. But I guess… I’ve always thought of myself as a problem that needed to be solved. How could I trust who I was or what I wanted when I was so _wrong?_ I never thought… I never thought I deserved to have a choice. But you, Q. You treat me like I do. Like it’s obvious. And maybe… maybe I’m starting to believe it too.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Quentin huffed out, defensive of Eliot even when Eliot was the one doing the attacking. “Aside, you know, from the fact that you’re occasionally an obtuse asshole.”

That got a laugh out of Eliot, and he flopped back against the pillows, tangling his fingers with Quentin’s.

“I am sorry about that, by the way,” Eliot added, low and regretful. “I wasn’t ready to hear… well, you know. That night at the lake, it was the first time I let myself think you might actually say _it_, and I panicked and I pushed you away. It wasn’t fair. I won’t do it again.”

“So,” Quentin began, hope mounting. “You’re saying you’re in?”

“I’m saying… I’m terrified,” Eliot admitted. “My life is batshit crazy, but trying to give you up pretty much killed me. There’s no _just fine_ for me anymore. I’m yours, Q, in whatever way you’ll have me.”

Quentin looked at Eliot, who looked so unsure and so unkempt, surrounded by all the trappings of royalty, centuries of nobility thrudding through his veins, and yet willing to choose _Quentin_, of all people. He burrowed his head into Eliot’s shoulder, letting a small smile cross his face.

“Okay. I’m into making history.”

Hours later, after they’d spent a good part of the morning lazily making out and watching Netflix, Quentin checked his phone to a barrage of messages. He dashed off texts to Julia and Alice and managed to convince Josh to let Kady know he was fine. That just left him and Eliot, trying to make plans.

“You don’t worry that this - _us_ \- is gonna ruin your career?” Eliot asked. “Congress by thirty-five, wasn’t it?” Quentin shrugged.

“I dunno. But like, there are way worse people than me who get elected all the time,” he replied. “I mean… yeah, it’s in the back of my mind, but, just there, you know? It definitely stays secret til after the election. Not for me, but for my mom.” Eliot nodded knowingly. “But then… if we can get ahead of the narrative, do it on our own terms? I think it might actually work out okay.”

“You sound like you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Eliot noted with a smirk. “How long, exactly, have you been imagining what my First Lady duties would be?” 

“Consciously? Since the DNC. Subconsciously and in total denial? Um… at least since you kissed me at the party,” Quentin confessed. “What about you?”

Eliot began laughing. 

“Christ, Q. For a genius, you’re so, incredibly unobservant. It’s adorable, darling,” he added, kissing Quentin’s forehead. “Since the Olympics.”

“Since the _Olympics?_” Quentin squawked. “That’s literally-”

“The day we met, yes Q. Nothing gets past you, does it? You came walking up to me, looking half lost and somehow like you belonged, all at once, and it was _over_ for me. That mid-range dark denim you were wearing really did it for me and all my straight-boy fantasies.”

“Joke’s on you, then, since I am thankfully _very_ not straight,” Quentin said, grinning like a fool and clambering on top of Eliot to kiss him senseless. As they rolled over, Eliot rolled onto Quentin’s phone and hit the voicemail button.

“You hopeless, romantic little shit,” the President’s voice echoed out from the speaker. “It had better be forever. Be safe.”

*******

Sneaking out of the palace at night was Eliot’s idea, but Quentin certainly wasn’t going to object. Dressed in casual clothes and walking side by side with their faces tilted down just a bit, they could have been any other young men walking the streets of the city at night, maybe a pair of grad students or two guys out on a first date. Not a single person recognized the prince and the First Son as Eliot led Quentin with purpose.

When they came up in front of a huge, elegant building, Quentin stopped short. He knew where they were now.

“El? Wanna tell me why we’re at the Ember Museum?” he asked, looking up at the facade of Fillory’s most famous museum. Eliot just smiled his mysterious grin and grabbed Quentin’s hand, dragging him up the steps and around to a side entrance. At the door, a discreet, tall man in a suit nodded at them both.

“Thanks, Mike, I owe you one,” Eliot said, shaking hands with the guard and, Quentin notices, slipping him a wad of cash. Before Quentin could say anything, they were on the move again, fluidly moving from room to room, each one full of beautiful, rare artwork that Quentin half-recognized from textbooks, Eliot narrating the whole way like a full-fledged docent.

“You’re in your element here,” Quentin noted in a brief moment when Eliot stopped to draw breath.

“Shut up,” Eliot said, no venom in it as he smirked at Quentin. “This is kind of my thing, okay? I like to come here at night. Some of the guards know me. I think I keep coming because.. no matter how many places I go or how much I read or how many people I meet, this place is proof I’ll never learn it all. Everything here has meaning, and we’ll never know all of it,” he reflected. “And the _archives_, Q, I could spend hours in there - _mmph_.”

He was cut off because Quentin stopped, in the middle of the corridor, and yanked him backward, half stumbling, into a kiss. He blinked his eyes open to find Quentin looking up at him with _that one look._

“What was that for?” Eliot asked. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I just, like.” Quentin shrugged. “Really love you.”

Eliot took his hand and brushed a chivalrous kiss to the knuckles, then began dragging him through another maze of corridors.

“Here we are,” Eliot said, pulling Quentin through an elegant archway towards somewhere with light emanating. “This is my favorite. I called ahead and asked Mike to leave the light on.”

When they entered the room, Quentin had to hold back a gasp. The vaulted roof seemed to stretch onward forever, with stars painted on the ceiling above. Beneath it, the room was arranged like a city square somewhere in Florence, all climbing columns and gleaming archways, fountains and statues, and along one wall, an enormous choir screen of marble, covered in carvings of holy figures. Even Q, for all his lapsed faith, felt _something_ here.

“At night, it’s like walking through a real piazza,” Eliot said, softly. “But there’s no one around trying to sneak a picture or stare. You can just _be_.” And Quentin realized it all at once, that this was Eliot’s _sanctuary_, and that he had chosen to share it with him. Somehow, it felt more intimate than anything else they’d done together.

“Tell me everything,” he simply said, lacing his fingers through Eliot’s.

So Eliot did. He narrated the stories of the Greek gods and the artists who had sculpted them, the myths behind the tapestries, everything down to the exact artistic movements. Eliot was in his element here, and Quentin loved him even more.

Quentin halted in front of a beautiful painting, drawn to it in ways he couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t the biggest one in the room, or the most technically proficient (to his admittedly amateur eye), but there was something about it that almost _glowed_. Eliot came up next to him and slipped an arm through his.

“Of course you’d find my favorite one,” he said affectionately.

“_A Life in the Day_,” Quentin read off the plaque beneath it. The painting was old-fashioned, in the style of illustrations Quentin vaguely remembered from when he took Arthurian literature as an elective in sophomore year. Instead of a king or a knight or a nymph, though, it showed a scene that was surprisingly rustic: a scene in a forest clearing, with a giant, half-completed puzzle of some sort taking up much of the ground. Two figures knelt among the colorful tiles, a little blurred and indistinct but both clearly male, wearing the clothes of ordinary peasants. One of them was handing a tile to the other, and as they did, their hands overlapped with each other, as if that was the true purpose of the action and not exchanging a tile.

“Shall I tell you about it?” Eliot asked, a hint of teasing in his voice. “I know how it does it for you when I’m a know-it-all.” Quentin shoved his shoulder good-naturedly, but nodded anyway. Eliot smiled softly, directly them both to look at the painting again.

“I don’t suppose you ever studied Fillorian myths, did you?” he asked. Quentin shook his head. “That’s all right, hardly anyone outside Fillory does, aside from very specialized scholars. We’ve got our own fairy tales and myths, though, just like the Brits have Camelot, and so on.” He waved a dismissive hand.

“You know your _Chronicles of Narnia_, of course, but I’ll bet you didn’t know that C.S. Lewis got one idea from Fillorian myth. The idea of the four thrones and the four monarchs? That’s one of ours. According to legend, in the golden age of Fillory, the kingdom wasn’t ruled by one king or queen, but a quartet who would balance each other out. There was always a High King, of course, but all four monarchs represented the push-and-pull balance of ruling a kingdom.

“So, once upon a time, Fillory was placed in grave danger because of a pair of bored, destructive gods who decided that our kingdom was merely their plaything. The kings and queens of the time didn’t take kindly to this, as you might imagine, and they fought to save Fillory for everyone in it. In the end, though, they had to slay the warring brother-gods whose negligence and boredom had nearly doomed Fillory. All was well, for a time. But the kings and queens hadn’t counted on one thing: gods don’t take kindly to other gods being slain by mortals. Even though the gods of Fillory were very minor in the grand scheme of things, the old gods were angry. So angry, in fact, that they decided to punish the entire universe for it by turning off magic.”

“Turning it off? What, like a faucet?” Quentin joked. 

“There is nothing funny about magical plumbing, I’ll have you know!” Eliot replied, mock-affronted. “This was in the days before magic disappeared for good, and Fillory was a land rich with magic. It counted on it to survive. So when magic was taken away, the kings and queens couldn’t let that stand. They discovered an ancient text that suggested magic could be unlocked again, but only by acquiring a series of keys that would… well. Unlock it.

“One day, the two kings found a clue to the whereabouts of one of the keys, and they walked through a door to find it. When they emerged, they were in a forest they knew, a Fillorian forest - and all around them, they could sense ambient magic everywhere. Their celebration was cut short, however, upon surveying their surroundings and realizing the door had not just transported them in space, but in time. They’d been cast back to a Fillory past, centuries before they’d ever been born.

“They walked and walked until they found a clearing, and that’s where they found what they had been looking for. You see, the clue pointed them to a legendary mosaic, a challenge that asked the quester to use the tiles there to create something that depicted the beauty of all life.”

“The beauty of all life,” Quentin repeated, the phrase sounding familiar. “Haven’t I heard that before? You wrote it to me, in that email about the fairytale prince.” Eliot smiled.

“Yes, just so. The kings weren’t the first to try the mosaic, but they were the most determined. They realized no spell could solve it for them, so they settled in a small cottage nearby and simply began to work by hand. Years passed, and they… uh,” he cleared his throat, “they fell in love. With each other and with a beautiful woman who lived in the village nearby. They had a son, and then their wife died, and they raised their boy together. A family. More years passed. The kings became middle-aged, and their son became a man. More years passed. The kings were grandfathers now. And one day, after decades spent on their quest, one of the kings sat down in his favorite chair for a nap and never woke up.”

“They never solved it?” Quentin asked with a lump in his throat, unexpectedly invested in the outcome of this fairytale he’d never heard before. To his surprise, Eliot smiled and held up a finger.

“Patience, Q darling. They didn’t solve it exactly, no. But the surviving king mourned his husband so deeply that he swore to dig his grave by hand, not by magic. When he removed the first shovelful of dirt, he found something in the ground - a golden tile, a missing piece of the mosaic. He set it down on the empty mosaic board, and a great wave of magic emanated from the ground. The tile disappeared, and in its place was the key. Wait, there’s still more,” he cautioned.

“Even as he picked up the key, a girl approached the king. He recognized her, though she did not know him: she was a hero of Fillory who he had read about in his present day, but who was still a young girl in the time he found himself in now. He realized, all at once, that she needed the key in order to complete her own quest that would save Fillory from a vicious beast in his time. So he gave it to her on one condition: that she help him write a letter and bring it to the castle to await time looping around again.”

“What? Why?”

“In their original time, one of the queens discovered the letter, which had been waiting since the king sent it decades earlier. The letter detailed how they had lived and died, and how to find the key in the present day. The queen set out to find the key, which was buried with the girl-hero, and she stopped the kings from beginning the quest in the first place. All was well.”

Quentin rested his head against Eliot’s shoulder. 

“That’s sort of sad, though,” he mused. “They lived out an entire life together, and that life - and their family - just gets erased and never even happened.” 

“That’s not the end of the story, Q,” Eliot said. “There’s one more part. See, the kings were a little confused about how the queen had gotten the key when it shouldn’t be possible yet. So she took them into the throne room, where no one would disturb them, and she gave them the letter that one of them had written in the timeline that never was. And as they sat on the dais and read the letter, all their memories of that life that they’d never lived somehow came back to them. It hadn’t happened, but they could still remember it. And they lived. Again.”

“So the beauty of all life… it wasn’t the mosaic at all, was it?” Quentin said slowly. Eliot smiled, shaking his head. “It was _them_, it was their life… together. _They_ demonstrated the beauty of all life, just by living it.”

Eliot laced their hands back together.

“When I was younger, I had this very elaborate idea of taking somebody I loved here and standing in front of this painting, and telling them all about it, and them just… _understanding_,” he said, staring up at the painting with an unreadable expression on his face. “How extraordinary it is - that one of our myths is so beautiful and so, _so_ gay. And how… well. How someone like me might be deserving of a place in Fillorian history."

Quentin couldn’t think of what to do, so he did the first thing that came to mind. He whipped out his phone and, before Eliot could protest, snapped a picture of the prince gazing up at the painting.

“What are you doing?” Eliot protested. Quentin just grinned. 

“Taking a picture of a national gay landmark. And also a painting.” Eliot broke into laughter at that. As their laughter died down, he took Quentin’s hand and pressed a kiss to it, like a knight of old. Quentin could see past his shoulder to the holy figures watching them from afar, and vaguely wondered how the saints and angels would feel about them, a David and his Jonathan unashamed and (mostly) unafraid.

*****

Eliot chartered a private plane to get Quentin home. Even as much as he was dreading facing the music (and the _questions_) back at home, Quentin couldn’t find it in himself to have any negative emotions whatsoever - a major first for him.

At the airstrip, Eliot fumbled in his coat pocket for something. 

“Listen,” he said, withdrawing his clenched hand from his coat. “I want you to know… I’m sure. One thousand percent.” He turned over Quentin’s hand that he was holding, pressing something small and cool and heavy into his palm.

Eliot moved his hand away and there, sitting in Quentin’s palm, was Eliot’s signet ring. Before Quentin could say anything - or protest - Eliot just smiled.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’m sick of wearing it.” And despite there being a chance that some paparazzo could potentially jump out of the bushes and catch them, Quentin threw his arms around Eliot. He stopped himself before pressing a kiss to Eliot’s lips, instead settling for a fierce whisper of “I really, completely fucking love you.”

On the flight back, Quentin slipped the chain off his neck, where the key to his childhood home hung under his shirt. He slid the ring onto the chain and tucked it back under his collar, feeling the cool press of two homes against his heart.


	10. very important exceptions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> letters, again.

**Q,**

**“You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into me.” — Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens.**

**We always do seem to come back to him, don’t we? I’d like to think he’s sort of our patron saint, from almost the very start. You know why. **

**I despise being stuck here, as much as you despise being stuck there. Perhaps I’ll just pack a bag and turn up on your doorstep this time, and the _Lorian_ can speculate about where I’ve gone or if I’ve been kidnapped by sloths or joined a cult, but you and I will know I’m just curled up in your bed, reading old books and eating chocolates and making love to you until we both expire in a haze of sex and fudge sauce. You have to admit, it would be a wonderful way to go.**

**I’m afraid we’ll just have to live that way in one of our other lifetimes, though. Gran is getting on me about enlisting, keeps reminding me how Charleton had already served a year by the time he was my age. It’s getting to the end of the rope as to how long I can reasonably be considered on a “gap year.” Please do keep me, as your country is so fond of saying, in your thoughts and prayers.**

**I could take a long weekend in a few months, though? Can we visit your old house? I feel like I’m missing an important piece of information about you, which is to say that I absolutely have to see which movie posters you have up on the walls of your childhood bedroom. Let me guess: Lord of the Rings, one of the ones with Aragorn front and center? Or Star Wars, because nothing says geeky bisexual like Han and Leia?**

**I’ve thought more about coming out to my family, and that’s actually part of the reason I’m staying here for now. Margo has offered to be there when I tell Charleton, and I think I will. Again, thoughts and prayers (also, for Charlton, that High Queen Margo the Destroyer doesn’t eliminate the possibility of heirs from him if he reacts less than charitably).**

**Q, I love you, and I want you back here soon. I need your help picking a bed for my new room. I’ve decided to get rid of that gold monstrosity, and I figured you should have as much a say as I have.**

**Yrs,**

**El**

**“It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.” — Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, 1927.**

_El,_

_shit. do you think you’re going to enlist? i haven’t done any research on it yet. i’m gonna ask kady to have someone put together a binder on it. what would that mean? would you have to be gone a lot? would it be dangerous? would you actually have to go into war zones?? or is it just, like, wear the uniform and sit behind a desk. how did we not talk about this when i was there???? _

_sorry. i’m panicking. it’s what i do. my brain just… breaks, sometimes. but i’m there for you whatever you decide to do. just, like, let me know if i need to start practicing gazing out to sea from a castle window, waiting for my love to return home from the wars._

_it really does drive me nuts that you don’t get to have more say in your own life. when i picture you happy, i see you with your own apartment, somewhere outside the palace. fabulously decorated, of course, with meaning behind every piece of art and furniture, and a giant walk-in closet and a library. and i’m there, using up your good shampoo and making you come to the farmers’ market with me and waking up in the same goddamn time zone every. single. morning._

_when the election is over, we can figure out what we want to do. i’d love to be in the same place for a while, but i know you have to do what you have to do. remember i believe in you no matter what._

_good luck with charleton. if all else fails, just do what i did and act like a reclusive jackass until most of your family figures it out on their own._

_yes i did have a han and leia poster. yes that should have been my first clue. so sue me, i wasn’t the most observant teenager. now i'm more of a poe dameron man. weirdly enough, i also know someone who looks freakishly like him but we're not currently speaking, which only makes it marginally more weird. so._

_love you. tell margo hi. _

_q_

_“This is love—make no mistake about it—love has come to you—you are loved and loved. No one whom you meet is more loved than you are—no one in the whole world can be more loved.” - Radclyffe Hall to Evgeunia Souline, 1934_

**Q,**

**Remember what I said about Alexander Hamilton being our patron saint of sorts? Well, I think I’d forgotten one thing, and that’s that he also seemed to be the patron saint of things going horribly wrong at exactly the worst possible time. So, I guess we’re still on track. **

**I told Charleton. Not about you, exactly, but about me.**

**Specifically, we were discussing enlistment, Charlton and Josh and me, and I told Charlton that I’d rather not follow the traditional path, and that I hardly think I’d be much use to anyone in the military and I’d rather do something useful instead of something that’s done because that’s how things are. Well, Charlton asked why I was so intent on disrespecting the traditions of the men of this family, and I don’t know what the fuck came over me, because I opened my goddamn mouth and said, “Because I’m not like the rest of the men of this family, beginning with the fact that I’m _deeply_ gay, Charlton.”**

**You can imagine what came next. Josh practically had to peel him off the ceiling, and then the real fun started. Frankly, I’ve shut out a lot of what he said. Words like “misguided” seemed to show up a lot. “Perpetuity of the bloodline” and “respecting the legacy” also were apparently very important concepts. I was eventually able to gather that he was not surprised or offended to discover that I am very much not the heterosexual heir I’ve pretended to be, but rather surprised that I do not intend to _keep_ pretending.**

**I know we talked about my coming out to my family as a potential first step. I cannot say this has been reassuring, to be frank.**

**Sometimes I imagine moving to New York to take over launching Penny’s youth shelter there. He’s busy with his transportation initiative these days, anyway, it wouldn’t be hard. Just leaving. And not coming back. And maybe graffitiing a big old rainbow across the palace gates on the way out. It would be nice.**

**Do you know, I’ve realized I’ve never actually told you what I thought the first time we met?**

**You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about pain is the way it takes all your memories, all your foundations that make you you, and makes them so agonizing to look back upon because of the lies and the despair that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system.**

**So I started to think of myself and my life and my whole lifetime of memories as all the rooms of Whitespire Castle. All the separate rooms, all kept neat and tidy and apart, to be visited when desired and locked away when not. I took the night Margo left rehab and I begged her to go back and told her I was gay, and I put it in a room with delicate gold flowers on the walls and a carved golden harp. I took my first time, with one of my brother’s friends from uni when I was seventeen, and I found the smallest, most cramped little closet I could muster, and I shoved it in and locked the door. I took my father’s disappointment the day I think he realized I was different somehow, and I placed it in a room at the very end of the longest hall. I took his last night, the way his face looked softer than it ever had, all the memories and opportunities to reconcile that we’d never have, and I found the biggest ballroom possible, closed all the doors and windows, and locked it in for good. **

**But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the grounds, away from the castle, down to a small cottage with a beautiful garden outside and a mosaiced courtyard.**

**You were talking with Julia and Alice, happy and animated and fully _alive_, as if you could access some secret world that I never had, never could. And you were so beautiful, Q. Your hair was longer then. You weren’t even a president’s son yet, but you weren’t afraid. You had a book sticking out of your messenger bag. **

**And then I thought, this is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that loved me, it would set me on fire.**

**And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.  
Which was quite shocking. I find that things aren’t usually worth caring about. With some limited, but very important exceptions. Very limited.**

**And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it? Sometimes, even now, I still can’t.**

**Peaches and Plums, **

**El**

**“My affection for you has entered my heart far more deeply than any I have ever felt for anyone else, and it has so wholly taken possession there that it tries to rule alone, and, as it were, to practice tyranny.” - Hubert Languet to Sir Philip Sidney, 1574**

_El,_

_God. I don’t even know what to say other than to tell you how much i love you. Jules and Alice send their love too. not as much as me, obviously._

_please don’t worry about me. we’ll figure it out. i’ve been working on patience. i’ve learned all kinds of things from you (and not just the dirty things)._

_god, what can i possibly write to make this better? you’re the writer, not me. my most profound writing has usually involved quoting lord of the rings, star wars, or the chronicles of narnia, none of which feel appropriate here._

_here, i’ve got it. i can’t match you for prose, but i’m pretty damn good at lists._

_AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HRH PRINCE ELIOT OF FILLORY_

_the sound of your laugh when i say something unbelievably geeky  
the way your voice drops when i piss you off  
that thing you do where you hold your head up like you’re wearing a crown all the time.  
how your hands look when you play piano  
the things i understand about myself now because of you  
how you think empire strikes back is the best star wars (still wrong, by the way) because you understand that there’s no light without darkness too  
your ability to quote shakespeare  
your ability to recite patrick swayze’s final speech from dirty dancing  
how hard you try  
how hard you’ve always tried  
how determined you are to keep trying  
the way it feels when you hug me and my head tucks right under your chin and you hold me like you’ve done it for fifty years already  
that when your body covers mine, i can’t think of anything else, and why would i, because nothing could possibly matter more  
the way you look so soft and peaceful when you first wake up  
your huge, generous, resilient heart  
your equally huge dick  
the face you just made when you read that last one. sorry baby, you and your filthy mind have been rubbing off on me  
the dirty pun you just made in your head when you read that one  
the way you looked at me the first time you came to my bed  
the fact that you loved me all along_

_i’ve been thinking about that last one ever since you told me, and about what an idiot i was. it’s so hard for me to get out of my head sometimes, and i keep coming back to how i used to try to act like it was nothing sometimes. now i realize that we loved each other before we knew we loved each other, and we went ahead and did it anyway. who gets proof of concept like that?_

_god, i want to fight everyone who’s ever hurt you, but it was me too, wasn’t it? all that time. i’m so sorry._

_please stay gorgeous and strong and unbelievable. i miss you i miss you i love you. i’m calling you as soon as i send this, but i know you like seeing these things written down._

_q_

Quentin roamed the halls, angry and frustrated and with a lot of pent-up _feelings_ that he had nowhere to direct. For all the joy he got out of fixing things, as only he can, at that moment, he didn’t want to mend, but to destroy. And there was one person he could destroy instead of himself.

He found Rupert Chatwin hunched at his office’s open window, smoking a cigarette. _That'll do._

“Those things will fucking kill you,” Quentin said, almost like a line in a routine. He’d said it so many times that it was almost a bit between them at this point, but this time, he meant it, and almost wished they would.

“Kid-”

“_Don’t_ call me that.”

Rupert turned around and stubbed his cigarette out, giving Quentin his first proper look at his face. He was as handsome as ever, but looked exhausted and worn down - really, he looked like shit, and Quentin had to tamp down that habitual concern and remind himself that they weren’t friends anymore and, apparently, never had been in the first place.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Rupert said.

“No shit,” said Quentin. “I just wanted to see if you’d have the balls to actually talk to me.”

“You realize you’re talking to a senator,” he replied calmly, too calmly, and Quentin just _couldn’t_ anymore.

“Yeah, big fucking man. Hey, how about you tell me how you’re serving the people who voted for you by being Christopher Plover’s chickenshit little sellout?”

“What the hell did you come here for, Quentin, hm?” Chatwin asked, and he sounded _tired_. “Do you wanna fight me or something?”

“I want you to tell me _why_.” Something in Chatwin’s jaw twitched.

“You wouldn’t understand. There’s so many moving parts… you know how it is. You know I’ll always be grateful to your family for what you’ve done for me, but-”

“I don’t give a _shit_ about what you think you ‘owe’ us. I _trusted_ you!” Quentin shouted. “Do you have any idea how hard that is? Don’t condescend to me. You know what I’m capable of. You’ve seen better than anyone. If you told me, I’d get it. What, does Plover have dirt on you or something? Come on!”

Chatwin hesitated before his mask slipped back into place.

“I’m doing this because it’s what needs to be done. It was my choice, my own free will,” he said levelly. Quentin turned away in disgust before whirling on his heel once more, a fresh wind of anger taking over.

“You remember that night in Hartford,” he began, voice low and quivering but calm and cold. “You ordered pizza for all of us pulling the all-nighter, and you showed me pictures of the kids you fought for in court, and we drank that nice bottle of scotch from the mayor? I remember sitting on the floor, half-drunk and half-asleep, thinking, ‘God, I hope I can be like him.’ Because you were brave and you stood up for things, and you didn’t even flinch even though everyone knew all the things they knew about you.”

Chatwin finally snapped.

“Trust me, kid, you don’t want to be like me!” he nearly shouted.

“I already _am_ like you!” Quentin actually did shout, then collected himself enough to lower his voice. “Or, close enough.”

“What are you saying?” Rupert asked, actually caught off guard for once.

“You know exactly what I’m saying. I think you always did, even before I did,” Quentin spit out.

“You’re not… you don’t…” Rupert stammered. On meeting Quentin’s icy gaze, he pulled himself together. “Fine, you want me to be your fucking rainbow role model? Here’s my advice. Keep your mouth shut. You’ve got it easier than I ever did. You could still get yourself a nice wife, no one would know the difference, and the best part is it wouldn’t even be a lie,” Rupert said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. That was the tipping point for Quentin, and he couldn’t even stop the words spilling out of him, only having a split second to pray that no one else would walk by.

“It _would_ be a lie, because it wouldn’t be _him!_” 

Chatwin rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly looked so much older than his thirty-nine years.

“Goddammit, Quentin, you can’t… I work for Plover now, do you have any idea… you can’t just say this shit to me! You have to be more careful than this” he said. “Get out. Get the fuck out of my office, and just… don’t come back.”

“God,” Quentin said, his hands floundering around, his voice cracking. “You know, it’s worse than trust. I _believed_ in you.”

“I wish you hadn’t. Now. Get out.” Quentin didn’t need to be told a third time. He stalked out, shoulders squared and slamming the door behind him. 

Back in his room, he tried to call Eliot, but got no answer. He did, at least, get a text back before his mind could start doing its usual spiral. _Sorry, meeting with Philip. Talk ASAP. Love you._

If he couldn’t talk to Eliot, he could at least imitate him. Quentin reached under his bed in the dark until his hand closed around the cool neck of a glass bottle. 

“Cheers,” he muttered, and unscrewed the top.

****  
_el,_

_so i’ve had whiskey. bear with me._

_so there’s this thing you do. this thing. it drives me crazy. i think about it at least four times a day._

_there’s a corner of your mouth, and a place that it goes, pinched and lopsided like this flaw that’s supposed to remind us all that you’re human and not some renaissance statue come to life. i used to hate it because i thought it was what your mouth did when you were mad or disapproving. your ‘fucking flannel’ face, if you will._

_but i’ve kissed your mouth, that corner, so many times now. i’ve memorized it. topography on the map of you, a world i’m still charting like some great explorer (but, like, not the super racist colonizing ones, and, seriously, el, what the fuck is with that? why don’t we have more movies like atlantis. have you seen atlantis? you should see it. there’s a scene where the tall hot nerdy guy goes into the water and when he gets out his nipples are just… not drawn on anymore. and in hindsight i should have realized how very bi i am when i noticed an animated guy’s nipples or lack thereof.)_

_this thing. your mouth. that place. it’s what you do when you’re trying not to give yourself away. not in the way that you do all the time, those empty, constant, greedy grabs for a piece of you that you have to give. i mean the truth of you, the weird, perfect shape of your beautiful heart, the one outside your chest._

_on the map of you, my fingers can always find the green hills. the cool waters of chatwin’s torrent. a shore of white sand. the ancient part of you carved out of stone in a sacred circle. your spine is a ridge i’d die climbing._

_if i could spread the map out on my desk, i’d find that corner with my fingers, and i’d smooth it away and you’d be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps were. i don’t know what i believe anymore, but i get it now - saints’ names belong to miracles. and that’s you if there ever was one._

_give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. there’s so much of you._

_fucking yrs,_

_q_

_p.s. wilfred owen to siegfried sassoon, 1917:_

_And you have fixed my Life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet, but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze._

**Jean Cocteau to Jean Marais, 1939:**

**Thank you from the bottom of my heart for having saved me. I was drowning, and you threw yourself into the water without hesitation, without a backward look.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's ring out the decade (or ring in the new decade, depending what time zone you're in) with queliot! yes, that's a reference to casey mcquiston's dreamcast for rafael luna hidden in one of q's letters. also a reminder that today in the rwrb timeline is when henry and alex have their first kiss, so posting today felt appropriate. happy 2020, folks! may your new year be whatever you want it to be.


	11. have not saints lips?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> quentin and eliot nearly give kady a heart attack. other things happen too.

Quentin roamed the halls, angry and frustrated and with a lot of pent-up feelings that he had nowhere to direct. For all the joy he got out of fixing things, as only he could, right then, he didn’t want to mend, but to destroy. And there was one person he could destroy instead of himself.

He found Rupert Chatwin hunched at his office’s open window, smoking a cigarette.

“Those things will fucking kill you,” Quentin said, almost like a line in a routine. He’d said it so many times that it was almost a bit between them at this point, but this time, he meant it, and almost wished they would.

“Kid-”

“_Don’t_ call me that.”

Rupert turned around and stubbed his cigarette out, giving Quentin his first proper look at his face. He was as handsome as ever, but looked exhausted and worn down - really, he looked like shit, and Quentin had to tamp down that habitual concern and remind himself that they weren’t friends anymore and, apparently, never had been in the first place.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Rupert said.

“No shit,” said Quentin. “I just wanted to see if you’d have the balls to actually talk to me.”

“You realize you’re talking to a senator,” he replied calmly, too calmly, and Quentin just _couldn’t_ anymore.

“Yeah, big fucking man. Hey, how about you tell me how you’re serving the people who voted for you by being Christopher Plover’s chickenshit little sellout?”

“What the hell did you come here for, Quentin, hm?” Chatwin asked, and he sounded _tired_. “Do you wanna fight me or something?”

“I want you to tell me _why_.” Something in Chatwin’s jaw twitched.

“You wouldn’t understand. There’s so many moving parts… you know how it is. You know I’ll always be grateful to your family for what you’ve done for me, but-”

“I don’t _give_ a shit about what you think you ‘owe’ us. I _trusted_ you!” Quentin shouted. “Do you have any idea how hard that is? Don’t condescend to me. You know what I’m capable of. You’ve seen better than anyone. If you told me, I’d get it. What, does Plover have dirt on you or something? Come on!”

Chatwin hesitated before his mask slipped back into place.

“I’m doing this because it’s what needs to be done. It was my choice, my own free will,” he said levelly. Quentin turned away in disgust before whirling on his heel once more, a fresh wind of anger taking over.

“You remember that night in Hartford,” he began, voice low and quivering but calm and cold. “You ordered pizza for all of us pulling the all-nighter, and you showed me pictures of the kids you fought for in court, and we drank that nice bottle of scotch from the mayor? I remember sitting on the floor, half-drunk and half-asleep, thinking, ‘God, I hope I can be like him.’ Because you were brave and you stood up for things, and you didn’t even flinch even though everyone knew all the things they knew about you.”

Chatwin finally snapped.

“Trust me, kid, you don’t want to be like me!” he nearly shouted.

“I already _am_ like you!” Quentin actually did shout, then collected himself enough to lower his voice. “Or, close enough.”

“What are you saying?” Rupert asked, actually caught off guard for once.

“You know exactly what I’m saying. I think you always did, even before I did,” Quentin spit out.

“You’re not… you don’t…” Rupert stammered. On meeting Quentin’s icy gaze, he pulled himself together. “Fine, you want me to be your fucking rainbow role model? Here’s my advice. Keep your mouth shut. You’ve got it easier than I ever did. You could still get yourself a nice wife, no one would know the difference, and the best part is it wouldn’t even be a lie,” Rupert said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. That was the tipping point for Quentin, and he couldn’t even stop the words spilling out of him, only having a split second to pray that no one else would walk by.

“It _would_ be a lie, because it wouldn’t be _him!_” 

Chatwin rubbed a hand over his face. and Quentin realized how he suddenly looked so much older than his thirty-nine years.

“Goddammit, Quentin, you can’t… I work for Plover now, do you have any idea… you can’t just _say_ this shit to me! You have to be more careful than this” he said. “Get out. Get the fuck out of my office, and just… don’t come back.”

“God,” Quentin said, his hands floundering around, his voice cracking. “You know, it’s worse than trust. I _believed_ in you.”

“I wish you hadn’t. Now. Get out.” Quentin didn’t need to be told a third time. He stalked out, shoulders squared and slamming the door behind him. 

Back in his room, he tried to call Eliot, but got no answer. He did, at least, get a text back before his mind could start doing its usual spiral. _Sorry, meeting with Philip. Talk ASAP. Love you._

If he couldn’t talk to Eliot, he could at least imitate him. Quentin reached under his bed in the dark until his hand closed around the cool neck of a glass bottle. 

“Cheers,” he muttered, and unscrewed the top.

****  
_el,_

_so i’ve had whiskey. bear with me._

_so there’s this thing you do. this thing. it drives me crazy. i think about it at least four times a day._

_there’s a corner of your mouth, and a place that it goes, pinched and lopsided like this flaw that’s supposed to remind us all that you’re human and not some renaissance statue come to life. i used to hate it because i thought it was what your mouth did when you were mad or disapproving. your ‘fucking flannel’ face, if you will._

_but i’ve kissed your mouth, that corner, so many times now. i’ve memorized it. topography on the map of you, a world i’m still charting like some great explorer (but, like, not the super racist colonizing ones, and, seriously, el, what the fuck is with that? why don’t we have more movies like atlantis. have you seen atlantis? you should see it. there’s a scene where the tall hot nerdy guy goes into the water and when he gets out his nipples are just… not drawn on anymore. and in hindsight i should have realized how very bi i am when i noticed an animated guy’s nipples or lack thereof.)_

_this thing. your mouth. that place. it’s what you do when you’re trying not to give yourself away. not in the way that you do all the time, those empty, constant, greedy grabs for a piece of you that you have to give. i mean the truth of you, the weird, perfect shape of your beautiful heart, the one outside your chest._

_on the map of you, my fingers can always find the green hills. the cool waters of chatwin’s torrent. a shore of white sand. the ancient part of you carved out of stone in a sacred circle. your spine is a ridge i’d die climbing._

_if i could spread the map out on my desk, i’d find that corner with my fingers, and i’d smooth it away and you’d be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps were. i don’t know what i believe anymore, but i get it now - saints’ names belong to miracles. and that’s you if there ever was one._

_give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart. there’s so much of you._

_fucking yrs,_

_q_

_p.s. wilfred owen to siegfried sassoon, 1917:_

_And you have fixed my Life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet, but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze._

**Jean Cocteau to Jean Marais, 1939:**

**Thank you from the bottom of my heart for having saved me. I was drowning, and you threw yourself into the water without hesitation, without a backward look.**

*****  
The sound of Quentin’s phone ringing jolted him out of a surprisingly deep sleep. He fumbled to answer it and nearly fell out of bed in the process.

“Hello?”

“_What did you do_.” Kady’s voice was almost eerily calm, which was how Quentin knew something was very, very wrong. Judging by the clicking heels and muttering swearing in the background, she was running somewhere. 

“Um. Be more specific?” Quentin asked, willing his brain to get with the program.

“Check the fucking news, you horny little miscreant. How could you possibly be stupid enough to _get photographed?_ I swear to God, Quentin-”

Quentin didn’t even catch the last sentence because his stomach had dropped all the way through the floor and that familiar glow of panic was creeping into his vision.

“Oh, fuck.” With trembling hands, he put Kady on speaker and Googled his own name.

**BREAKING: Photos Reveal Romance Between Prince Eliot and Quentin Coldwater**

**Further Into Fillory: FSOTUS And Prince Eliot — Totally Doing It!**

**The Oral Office: Ready FSOTUS’s Steamy Emails To Prince Eliot**

**Royal Family Declines to Comment on Reports of Prince Eliot’s Relationship With First Son**

**20 GIFs That Perfectly Describe Our Reaction to Prince Eliot and FSOTUS’s Letters — Yes, Including That One**

Quentin threw his phone across the bed as if it had burned him. He curled in on himself, his head into his chest, arms wrapped tightly like a hug (or a straitjacket) as he tried desperately to regulate his breathing.

Kady burst into the room, a steely expression of rage on her face that didn’t quite cover the absolute terror - and maybe a tiny hint of sympathy?

“You’re on communications lockdown,” she said curtly, picking up his phone from where it had landed. In its place, she dumped a stack of newspapers. Quentin felt sick to his stomach as a nasty, homophobic headline on the _Daily Lorian_ proclaimed “Queen Eliot!” next to a blown-up photo of what is undeniably him and Eliot kissing in the back seat of a car, clearly shot with a long-range lens… through the windshield. Tinted windows but _fuck_, they forgot about the windshield.

Fucking hell. He’s fucked. Eliot’s fucked. And, Jesus fucking Christ, his mother’s campaign is fucked, and his political career is fucked, and he vaguely thinks he might pass out.

“I need my phone. _Kady_, I need my phone. I have to call El-”

“No, you fucking do not,” Kady said, and there again, that hint of empathy that reminded Quentin that Kady wasn’t the enemy here. “We don’t know yet how the emails got out, so it’s radio silence until we figure out the leak.”

“Is Eliot okay?” God, Eliot. All he could think about was Eliot, his perfect, languid exterior melting away into sheer terror, locked away in his bedroom at Whitespire and desperately alone and terrified.

“The president is sitting down right now with as many members of the Office of Communication as we could get out of bed at three in the morning,” Kady said instead. “It’s about to be gay DEFCON five in this adminstration. Put some fucking clothes on.”

“DEFCON one,” Quentin automatically corrected, then cursed himself. To his surprise, Kady’s mouth twitched in the tiniest hint of amusement. As Kady got up to yank some clothes out of his closet, he looked more closely at the papers. One is labeled “Prince Eliot: Secret Poet?” And it begins with a line Quentin knows by heart by now.

_Should I tell you that when you’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams…_

“FUCK!” Quentin yelled again, shoving the newspaper onto the floor. Somehow, this made him feel sicker than anything yet. That was _his_. It feels obscene and horrifically violating to see them there, printed out for the world to salivate over and gossip about. “How the fuck did they _get these?”_

“Yup. You dirty did it,” Kady said, not unkindly, as she tossed him a button down and jeans. “Get dressed.” She even held out an arm for him to steady himself as he yanked on the pants, and despite it all, Quentin was struck with a moment of intense gratitude for her.

“We’re running. Priority is damage control, not feelings,” she directed him as they hustled down the hall. Everything ran through his mind - plummeting approval ratings, his mother’s re-election down the toilet, Eliot being stripped of his royal titles, his own career in Congress over before it starts - and yet it all paled in comparison to an overwhelming need to _talk to Eliot_. But he knew - and he knew Eliot knew too - that this was so much bigger than them. He couldn’t even decide who to be angriest with: himself or the _Lorian_ or the monarchy or the whole damn country.

He nearly crashed into Kady as she skidded to a stop in front of a door. He pushed the door open, and the whole room went silent.

His mother stared at him from the head of the table and flatly said, “Out.”

At first, he thought she was talking to him, but then she shifted her gaze to the people around the table.

“I said, out, everyone now. I need to talk to my son.”

Once the room cleared, with Kady closing the door as even she backed out, Quentin found his hands captured by his mother. She looked at him with a fierce look he recognized from the toughest debates, the cruelest media taunts, the time in fourth grade when she marched into the principal’s office to demand that they put a stop to the bullying Quentin and others were enduring.

“You listen to me,” she said. “I am your mother. I was your mother before any of this, and I will be your mother after it all goes away and I’m just some lady played by a terrible actor in shitty History Channel special. You tell me what you want to do here, and I will back your play. No question.”

_But the election_, Quentin thought. _But the country._

“Do you feel forever about him, Quentin?” she asked, a little more gently. Quentin thought about it for a moment, tried to weigh whether or not this was worth throwing their lives, the election, and potentially the governments of two global powers into chaos. In the end, he really didn’t need to think about it - he knew the answer.

“Yeah. I do.”

The president’s face took on a sly grin.

“Well then. Fuck it.”

**THE WASHINGTON POST  
** White House Goes Silent As News of FSOTUS’s Affair Breaks  
by Tracy Lipson, White House Correspondent 

**In a move uncharacteristic of the Coldwater administration, the White House has gone silent following the leak of emails that revealed an ongoing romantic and sexual relationship between First Son Quentin Coldwater and Prince Eliot of Fillory, third in line to the Fillorian throne. The emails, which reportedly were exchanged through a private email server, were leaked from an anonymous source and first published Tuesday by the Fillorian tabloid The Daily Lorian before being picked up by media worldwide. **

**Neither the White House nor Whitespire Palace has commented on the leak or the contents of the emails therein, but that hasn’t stopped the rest of the world from sharing their opinions - and there are a lot of them. The leak, which Twitter quickly began calling the Mosaic Letters, revealed a year’s worth of private messages between Coldwater and Prince Eliot, many of which include emotional and explicit exchanges detailing their relationship.**

**Senator Christopher Plover (R-IN) released a statement on the leak. “Aside from raising questions of President Coldwater’s ability to be impartial on matters of international relations, not to mention traditional family values, this incident also raises the issue of the true nature of the private email server. What else might this private channel have been used for, and to whose benefit or detriment? The American people deserve transparency.”**

**Sources say that the server in question is similar to one set up during George W. Bush’s administration, with the primary purpose of facilitating personal communications between members of the White House staff and family. Experts have been reviewing the messages discovered in the leak and, so far, no reports of sensitive information have emerged, other than that pertaining to the relationship between Coldwater and Prince Eliot.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay in updating, friends! i started a new job in the new year and it's been an adjustment period, getting my schedule worked out. i hope you like this one, and i will hopefully have the next few chapters up in a more timely fashion, especially as this is quickly turning into my s5 coping mechanism.


	12. i dreamed a dream in days gone by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> margo and q have a heart-to-heart.

For five hours, Quentin was shuffled from room to room, meeting to meeting, going back and forth with more strategists and PR hacks and consultants than he’d ever wanted to see in his life. In between two of those meetings, he leaned against a wall next to his mother.

“I told Rupert Chatwin,” he said quietly. Her head barely turned to face him, but he knew she was paying attention. “About me and Eliot. I fucking told Chatwin.”

The President groaned at the implication, rubbing her hands across her face. A thought occurred to Quentin, a moment later.

“It couldn’t have been him,” he said as he realized. “I told him two days ago. There’s pictures here much older than that. It wasn’t him.” 

That was a small comfort in the storm of absolute _shit_ that he still had to face. Six hours into the longest day of his life, he was finally given back his phone, fat lot of good it did him - no one was taking his calls. He couldn’t get in touch with Eliot. _He couldn’t get in touch with Eliot_ and his mind did what it always did and catastrophized.

At some point, he wasn’t really sure when, Kady looked at Quentin, who had curled in on himself. Recognizing it for what it was, she leaned down to mutter in his ear.

“Hold tight, kid. I have an idea.” He barely nodded as she exited the room, and he could barely hear her as she asked someone outside for “permission to go outside normal diplomatic channels.”

Quentin wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Kady returned, throwing a duffel bag at him and ordering him to get up.

“Come on, let’s go. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

There’s a side entrance of the Residence that let him and Kady sneak out without being spotted by the press, and his family met him there. 

“Give ‘em hell,” his dad said. His mom reiterated her faith in him, and as for Julia, she just hugged him, shoved a hat on his head, and pushed him towards the car. When he got to the plane, he spotted Zelda there too and briefly wondered if she’d volunteered for the assignment - after all, she’d been there when all this started. 

As the plane cruised at altitude, Quentin let himself really _think_ about what all this meant for the first time. There was a tiny part of him, maybe five percent (but he wasn’t sure, numbers were always more of Alice’s thing), that was pleased with the whole thing for no other reason than he could finally lay claim to Eliot publicly. One of the most eligible bachelors in the world, lanky body, casual smirk? _All mine._

The rest, though, was an ugly knot of fear, anger, hurt, embarrassment, violation, and sheer panic. He had mastered the art of letting selected flaws show in public - his penchant for nerdy pop culture, his ever-shifting temper, his reticence. But those were the things he _chose_ to share. This was different. This was his _heart_ on display, which somehow bothered him even more than the fact that there were entire Twitter accounts and tabloid articles devoted to gleefully deconstructing the dirty details of his sex life.

In the plane on the way there, Kady whipped out her phone and immediately began chewing into whoever was on the other end. 

“Listen up, fucker. I’ve got FSOTUS with me and we are in the air, ETA six hours. You’ll have a car waiting, we will meet the queen and whoever else we need to meet to hash this shit out, or so help me God I will hang your balls from my rearview mirror. Now put Eliot on the phone and don’t you dare try to tell me he’s not there because I know you haven’t let him out of your sight.”

She shoved her phone at Quentin, who fumbled it before managing to get it up to his ear.

“Hello?” he said uncertainly as he heard rustling on the other end.

“Hello?” 

It was Eliot’s voice, low and shaky and confused, and Quentin was glad he was sitting down or the sense of relief he felt would have knocked him off his feet.

“_Sweetheart_,” he said, and relished the sound of Eliot’s exhale. 

“Q, love. Are you okay?” Quentin managed a wet laugh and a sniffle that earned him an eyeroll from Kady as she shoved a travel pack of tissues at him.

“Fuck, I’m fine, I’m fine. Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m… managing. Charlton broke a vase that was a gift from Queen Victoria, Gran ordered a complete communications blackout, and Mum hasn’t really said anything. But, er,” Eliot trailed off. “Other than that, all things considered?”

“I know. I’ll be there soon,” Quentin promised. There was another beat of silence, but before Quentin could fill it, Eliot spoke again.

“I’m not sorry,” he said quietly. “That people know, I mean.”

Quentin suddenly found himself with a lump in his throat.

“El, I-”

“Maybe-”

“I talked to my mom-”

“The timing is… it’s bullshit, but-”

“Wait,” Quentin said. “Are we. Um. Are we… trying to ask the same thing?”

“Were you going to ask if I wanted to tell the truth, and fuck it to anyone who says otherwise?” Eliot asked, a hint of his old smile creeping into his voice and warming Quentin down to the tips of his toes.

“Yeah,” Quentin said, clenching and unclenching his fist. “Yeah. I… I was. Do you… want that?”

Eliot took a moment to reply, but when he did, his voice was steady and his mind clear.

“I don’t know if I would have chosen this, now, yet. But it’s out there now, no going back and I just… I’ve had to lie about so much. I won’t lie about this. About you.”

Quentin couldn’t _not_ cry a little at that.

“I fucking love you,” he managed.

“I love you too,” Eliot replied.

“Just hold on til I get there. I’m coming, okay? We’re gonna figure this out.” This time, it’s Eliot who lets out a sharp sob on a breath.

“Please, do hurry.”

As he hung up and handed the phone back to Kady, Quentin looked at her face a little more closely. 

“Thank you, Kady, you didn’t have to-”

“Can we not?” she said, holding up a tired hand to stop him from gushing. “I’m gonna say this exactly once, so pay attention, or don’t. Whatever. But if you repeat it I’ll have you kneecapped.” She glared at him in that particular way of hers that was somehow deeply personal and deeply terrifying all at once. “I’m rooting for you, okay?”

“Oh my God. _Kady_. You’re my mean friend!”

*****

When Quentin and Kady pulled up, he was surprised to see Josh waiting for them, a sheepish look on his face. Quentin looked between the two of them.

“How did you do this?” he asked Kady. “Wait, was Josh who you were calling? How the hell do you have his personal number?”

“Didn’t she ever tell you? Kady’s my sister!” Josh said cheerfully, attempting to throw an arm across her shoulders but being rebuffed with a glare.

“_Step_sister, asshole,” Kady punched him in the shoulder, but without any real effort behind it. “And the reason you didn’t know about it - because I know that’s your next question, don’t even pretend it wasn’t - is because, unlike _some_ people, we have an ounce of discretion and don’t let our personal lives get in the way of diplomatic affairs. Now, shut up, follow brother dearest, and let me get some sleep or I swear I will dig out all my old crap and hex the shit out of you.”

Quentin could only gape. Josh took pity on him, herding him into a side door and reminding him the way to Eliot’s suite. 

It wasn’t Eliot, but Margo who answered when Q knocked on the closed door. 

“Charleton, I _told_ you to stay the fuck away-” she began as she opened the door, brandishing what looked like an antique medical anatomy book. She dropped it as soon as she saw Quentin. “Oh, Q, I’m so sorry, I thought you were Charleton.” She wrapped him up in a surprisingly tight hug, possibly the most affection he’d ever gotten from her. “Thank God you’re here. I was about to come get you myself.”

Suppressing a grin at the thought of High Queen Margo storming the White House, Quentin looked past her to see Eliot, slumped on the couch with a bottle of brandy, wearing the same silk pajamas he’d worn that first night Quentin had stayed at the palace, what felt like an eternity ago.

“Scruffy looking nerf herder,” he quipped weakly, and in an instant, Quentin was crossing the room, half sobbing, half laughing, to meet Eliot in the middle. If Eliot’s voice on the phone was a comfort, his arms holding Quentin close were a talisman, something recognizable in any time and place that meant _safe_, that meant _love_, that meant _home_.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin whispered again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, if I hadn’t-”

“Okay, Quentin, we’re gonna stop you right there,” Margo said, her take-charge voice back even as she ruffled his hair fondly. Pressing a peck to Quentin’s lips, Eliot held onto his hand and dragged him back to the sitting nook, where the three of them sprawled together, Eliot’s head in Quentin’s lap and his feet dangling on Margo’s shoulders where she sat on the floor. Sitting there, munching on some cheese and crackers (Margo discreetly took away the brandy), the royals got Quentin up to speed on what had happened since the story broke.

First and foremost - and surprising precisely no one - the queen was absolutely livid. Not just because there was finally confirmation she couldn’t ignore about Eliot, but because it happened through something as undignified as a tabloid scandal. Charleton had been kept away by Margo every time he tried to approach for what she described (in a spot-on imitation) as “a serious discussion about the consequences of Eliot’s actions.” Jane had been by once, three hours before Quentin arrived, inscrutable, to tell Eliot that she loved him and he could have told her before.

“And I said, ‘That’s great, Mum, but as long as you’re letting Gran keep me trapped, it doesn’t mean a thing,’” Eliot added. Quentin stared at him, impressed and maybe a little turned on at this take-charge version of Eliot. “I feel kind of awful about it. All those times she should have been there for me, it just… _ugh_, it just caught up to me.”

“Maybe it was the kick in the ass she needs,” Margo suggested. “El, it’s hard, but she needed to hear it.” At the slight downturn at the corner of her mouth, Quentin was reminded that Eliot wasn’t the only royal damaged in the leak.

“Are you okay?” he asked Margo. “I know there were… some articles…” He trailed off nervously as a smile twitched over her face.

“Takes more than that to take this bitch down,” she said. “Honestly, it’s almost a relief. I’d rather the story be out there, up front, so I don’t have to deal with speculations and cover-ups. At least now I can stop acting like it’s something to be ashamed of.”

“I know the feeling,” Quentin said softly.

The night crept up on them, but still they stay in the room, locked together, the only three people who get it. Eliot slouched against Quentin and rhythmically ran his fingers through Margo’s hair in his lap, and, eventually, he dozed off. Even in sleep, Quentin could feel the tension throughout his body, and he hated himself a little bit again, for being the cause of it.

“I feel like he’s not telling me something,” he whispered to Margo. “I believe him when he says he’s in and he wants to tell everyone the truth, and I believe that he believes I want the same thing. But there’s something else he’s not saying, and it’s freaking me out that I can’t figure out what it is, and I can’t stop thinking about it, and-”

“Oh, Q, babe,” Margo said, lifting her head from Eliot’s lap to look him in the eyes. “He misses Dad. Or,” she amends, seeing the surprise on Quentin’s face, “He misses the possibility of what Dad might have been, someday. He never got to find out.”

“Can you… explain?” Quentin asked lamely. “What’s that like? What can I do?” 

Margo sat up all the way and reached into her sweater. She winked at Quentin, but then turned serious as she pulled out a small silver coin on a chain. No, not a coin - her sobriety chip.

“Do you mind if I go a bit sponsor?” she asked. When Quentin shook his head, she continued. “So, imagine we’re all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there’s that ground floor, the maximum depth of feeling you’ve ever experienced. Then the worst thing happens to you. The thing that haunted your dreams as a child, the thing that you thought would be okay if it happened when you were older because you’d have built up a tolerance.

But then it happens when you’re young, when your brain isn’t even fully done cooking. That worst thing is one of the first Big Things that happens to you, and it doesn’t just go all the way to the bottom, it burrows deeper and deeper and digs out a basement to house itself. And so every time something bad happens, it has that space to go deeper, to hurt more.”

Margo reached across Eliot’s sleeping form to touch Quentin’s hand. 

“Do you understand?” she asked, looking right into his eyes, unflinching. “You need to understand this to be with Eliot. He is the most nurturing, selfless, _spectacular_ person you could hope to meet, but there is a sadness and a hurt that you may never understand, but you need to love it as much as you love the rest of him.”

“I think I can grasp the concept,” Quentin said wryly. Margo cracked the barest hint of a smile.

“I gathered. But still. I never thought I’d see him willing to give it all to anyone, part and parcel, and then you come along with your hair and your geeky books and your terrible fashion sense-”

“Hey!”

“Shh!” she shushed him, raising a mischievous eyebrow and pointing exaggeratedly at the still-snoozing Eliot. “And he’s willing. And I never thought I’d see that in a thousand years.”

Quentin sat for a long moment, trying to absorb all the things he knew now and maybe always knew and wanted Margo to know that Eliot knew too. 

“I’ve never… I don’t know how much Eliot has told you, but if he’s told you much at all, you know I’ve got… well, I’ve never been through anything like that, but I’ve got an entire rack of baggage myself,” he began slowly. “But I get what you mean. I think I’ve always sensed that there’s some part of him that’s… unknowable, I guess? And I think he knows the same thing about me. And the thing is, before him, heading through that door to whatever the fuck lies on the other side of the wardrobe, that wasn’t my thing. But now… I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose - I love him on purpose.”

Margo smiled gently. “Then I think you’ll do fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so my new gig has been a bit of an adjustment, which is why this was supposed to be one long chapter but is going to be two shorter ones instead! thank you for all of the lovely comments you've been leaving - it means so much to me <3


	13. peaches and plums, peaches and plums

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> margo spills some tea. jane takes a stand.

“It’s foolishness, Eliot. You’re too young to understand,” Charleton was saying, and it was taking everything Quentin had not to punch him. He’d barged in on what was supposed to be a peaceful, strategic breakfast between Eliot, Q, and Margo, and promptly begun shouting at Eliot about breaking the communications embargo, about bringing Quentin to the palace, and, apparently, about continuing to embarrass the royal family. 

Quentin had heard that punching someone hard enough to break their nose would cause significant damage to the puncher’s knuckles as well, so he contemplated whether the coffee pot would do the trick (and whether the satisfaction would be worth losing a perfectly good half-pot of coffee).

“I’m _twenty-three_, Charleton,” Eliot said, perfectly calm but with an edge in his voice that Charleton probably didn’t even notice. “Mum was the same age when she and Dad met.”

“Yes, well, we all know how _that_ worked out,” Charleton said nastily. “Marrying a man who spent half our childhoods traveling, who never served his country. I never thought I’d see the day when _you’d_ be defending Dad, considering he wasn’t exactly your biggest fan.”

Eliot froze. Margo began to get up, fury flashing across her face, but Eliot put a hand on her arm to stop her.

“No. He wasn’t. But he got one thing right. Your obsession with family legacy is ridiculous and so, so outdated. This isn’t 1800, for Christ’s sake!”

“You clearly don’t know the first fucking thing about _legacy_ if you let something like this happen,” Charleton snapped. “The only thing to do now is bury it and hope that somehow, someday, people will believe that it was just gossip. That’s your duty, Eliot. Bury it, and be done with it.”

“I’m so sorry,” Eliot said, voice finally cracking even as he stood up to look Charleton in the eye. “I’m sorry I’m such a fucking _disgrace_ for being the way I am!”

“I don’t care if you’re _gay_,” Charleton said, and Quentin noted the use of the _if_ in there and fumed silently. “I care that you’ve made this choice, with _him_-” - he gestures to Quentin - “someone with a fucking target on his back already, that you’ve been so naive and selfish to think this wouldn’t affect us all!”

“Christ, Charleton, do you think I don’t know that?” Eliot finally was yelling. “Don’t you think I was _terrified_ that exactly this would happen? But how could I have predicted?”

“As I said. _Naive_,” Charleton sneered. “This is the life we live, Eliot. You’ve always know that. God knows I’ve tried to teach you that.”

“_Teach_ me? It wasn’t your job to teach me. You’re not Dad, no matter what you think,” Eliot spat out.

“And you don’t bloody listen. For once in your life, Eliot, don’t be a coward. Man up and _fix this_.”

Eliot flinched visibly, and for the first time, Quentin fully saw how someone as lively and colorful as Eliot had been broken down into the perfect princely veneer he’d hated for so long. Always implied, always the same refrain: _don’t embarrass us. Remember your place._

And then Eliot did the thing Quentin loved so much. He lifted his head high, squaring his shoulders out of their usual casual pose, and for a second, he looked every bit the king he could have been, if not for an accident of birth order. 

“I’m not a coward. And I don’t want to fix it.”

Charleton bit out a harsh laugh at that. “You don’t _want_ to. Christ, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You can’t possibly know.”

“Fuck off, Charleton. I love him,” Eliot snapped, and Quentin felt a warmth rise in his chest.

“Oh you _love_ him, do you?” Charleton’s reply was so patronizing, so snide, that Quentin began contemplating that abandoned plan of punching the heir to the Fillorian throne square in his perfect patrician nose. “Well then, what exactly do you intend to do, hm? _Marry him?_ Make him a Princess of Fillory? The First Son of the United fucking States, fourth in line to be Queen of Fillory?”

“I’ll abdicate, if it comes to that. What part of ‘I don’t care’ are you not hearing?”

“You wouldn’t _dare_,” Charleton challenged, and that was the wrong thing to say. Eliot looked him straight in the eyes.

“Well, considering we have a cousin who abdicated the British throne because he was a _fucking Nazi_ who also happened to be _fucking a Nazi_, I’m going to hazard a guess this wouldn’t be the worst reason a royal has done it, now would it? Or would you like to argue that being in love with a man is worse than hanging out with Hitler because the dick-sucking is literal instead of metaphorical?”

Charleton opened his mouth to reply, red-faced, but Eliot was on a roll.

“What are we even defending, Charleton? What kind of legacy, what kind of _family_, where we say ‘oh, we’ll take the murder, the violence, the colonizing, the destruction of entire cultures, we’ll polish that up nice and neat for the kiddies on school trips to the museum, but oh no, you’re a _poof?_ Well, now, that’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve had enough of letting you and Gran and the entire _goddamn_ world keep me pinned down. I’m done. I’m out. You can take your legacy and your decorum and _shove it up your fucking arse_, Charleton.”

He turned on his heel and stalked out of the kitchen. Quentin, mouth hanging open, stayed glued to his seat for another moment. Charleton, for his part, looked furious and also vaguely nauseous. Quentin got up.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “that is the bravest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

And he left too.

*****  
When they were summoned by the queen to “discuss the matter,” Eliot insisted that Quentin be brought along. 

“It’s his life too,” he insisted, and despite Charleton’s hand-wringing, Quentin went. Although judging by the icy glare he got when he took a seat next to Eliot, he wasn’t exactly going to receive a warm and fuzzy welcome. But by that point, he was done caring. He found himself caring very much, however, when the queen set down her cup of tea and made a delicately worded but steely suggestion.

“I was once told, by someone next to me at dinner - some prince, the country escapes me now, one of those I can never remember - that technology exists, these days, that can make almost anything appear to be true, whether it is or not,” she began. “Now, I don’t understand this technology very well, but I am given to believe that it is increasingly common, particularly as a means to smear the reputations of otherwise upstanding persons and to ignite scandal. I wonder,” she said, her gaze falling on Eliot directly, “if that is what happened here.”

Margo’s mouth fell open in a very un-princess-like manner, but Eliot’s gaze remained locked with his grandmother’s. For a moment, Quentin saw the resemblance: two steely wills, in open conflict for the first time ever.

“I see,” Eliot replied. “That would make all this much easier, wouldn’t it? Easier to pretend that I am the victim of deep fakes than to admit that I’m gay, that I have a boyfriend? It’s odd, Granny, I must say. There’s quite a lot of sympathy for people who have had their privacy violated in such obscene, cruel ways, as I have, and yet, your instinct is… what? Blame the internet?”

“Then what do you suggest?” Princess Jane spoke up for the first time, and to Quentin’s surprise, the question carried no hostility, just genuine curiosity.

“Present the truth,” Margo piped up, leaning forward. “Eliot - and Q - have been the victim of vile intrusions. They’re just a young couple who love each other who have been forced to go public in the most violating, spiteful of ways. Their privacy - their _relationship_ \- was put up for public consumption without their consent. They were _outed_. That’s not something most decent people are okay with.”

“And what about Eliot’s responsibilities, hm?” Charleton (of course) replied. “His duties to the family, to the lineage? And of course there’s the matter of heirs-”

“Adoption? Surrogacy?” Quentin chimed in, instinctively defending a future he didn’t know how much he wanted unti now, and Eliot lost focus for a moment as an image presented itself to him wholly formed: Quentin, in comfy, loose clothes, his hair tied back, watching a little boy run through a garden, a little boy who had Quentin’s soft eyes and a smile he could only have learned from Eliot. 

“And that would just raise more issues, now wouldn’t it?” Charleton answered with a patronizing eye roll. “Parental rights, what to do with the biological parents, rights of a non-blood royal-”

“Are those details pertinent right now, Charleton?” Jane interrupted.

“Well, _someone_ has to bear the stewardship for the royal legacy, Mama, and it’s clear that no one else cares to be up to the task.”

“I don’t care for that tone _at all_.”

“We can entertain hypotheticals as long as we want, but the fact of the matter is that anything except maintaining the royal image is _completely_ out of the question,” the queen said, setting down her teacup with an air of finality. “The country simply will not accept a prince of his proclivities. It will be seen as perverse.”

Quentin reached for Eliot’s hand under the table, squeezing it hard. Margo’s face turned an interesting shade of red as she opened her mouth to answer. Before either of them could speak, though, someone else did.

“Perverse to them, or perverse to you?” Jane asked, and all three of her children’s heads whipped around to look at her. “We haven’t even gotten a chance yet to see how people will react.”

“I have been serving this country for forty-five years, Jane. I believe I know its heart and its conscience by now. As I have told you since you were a little girl, you must remove your head from the clouds and-”

“Oh, will you all _shut up_ for a minute?” Margo brandished Josh’s tablet in her hand, turning it around so the rest of them could see. “Look.” And they did.

It was a national news broadcast from one of the Fillorian networks Quentin recognized, and the sound was off, but they could all clearly read the scroll at the bottom of the screen. WORLDWIDE SUPPORT POURS IN FOR PRINCE ELIOT AND FIRST SON OF U.S.

Even Charleton fell silent as the images rolled across the broadcast. A rally in New York outside the Beekman, decked out in rainbows with signs like FIRST SON OF OUR HEARTS. A banner on the side of the Pont Alexandre in Paris, draped down and reading QUENTIN AND ELIOT WERE HERE. A colorful mural on a wall in Germany of Quentin’s face in blue, purple, and pink with a silver crown on his brow. A crowd of people on the mall outside the Chatwin Museum with rainbow Fillorian flags and posters reading FREE ELIOT. A young woman with a buzz cut throwing up two middle fingers at the offices of the _Daily Lorian_. A crowd of teenagers in front of the White House wearing T-shirts that all say the same thing, in crooked Sharpie letters that Quentin recognized instantly: HISTORY, HUH?, with doodles of peaches and plums adorning the letters.

Quentin tried to swallow, but his throat wouldn’t let him. He looked up and met Eliot’s eyes instead, finding them as damp as his own were.

Princess Jane got up and crossed the room, toward the tall windows on the east side of the room.

“Jane, don’t-” the queen said, but Jane ignored her and reached for the heavy curtains, throwing them open with both hands. 

A burst of sunlight and color washed into the room. Down on the mall in front of Whitespire, there was a mass of people with banners, signs, American flags, Fillorian flags, pride flags, all waving joyfully. The crowd was so large, it filled up the entire pavement and pressed right up against the gates. Quentin and Eliot had been told to come in through the back - they’d never seen this.

Eliot cautiously approached the window, and Quentin held back as he watched Eliot lightly press his fingertips to the cool glass, gently, as if afraid it might shatter and reveal this was all an illusion. 

“Oh, my darling,” Jane exhaled, pulling Eliot to her and holding him tight. The queen cleared her throat.

“This is… hardly indicative of how the country as a whole will respond,” she said.

“Jesus _Christ_, Mum,” Jane said, releasing Eliot and taking a step forward in front of him. 

“This is precisely why I didn’t want you to see in the first place. You’re too softhearted to accept the truth, Jane, given any other option. The majority of this country still wants the ways of old.”

Jane drew herself up and approached the table, and all at once, Quentin knew where Margo got it from. “Of course they do, Mum. Of course the _bloody_ conservatives and the FU Fighters don’t want it. That’s not the _point_. Are you really so unwilling to believe that nothing has changed, nothing _could_ change? We could have a real legacy here, of hope and love and progress, not the same tepid shite we’ve been siphoning off the Brits since-”

“You will not speak to me this way,” the queen said icily. 

“I’m _fifty-eight years old_, Mum. Can’t we eschew decorum at this point?”

“No respect. None at all. No understanding of sacred duty or the sanctity of-”

“Or perhaps I should bring some of my concerns to Parliament?” Jane leaned forward, eyes glittering the way that her children’s did when they got something in their heads. “You know, I do think the left is rather finished with the old guard. I wonder, if I were to mention those meeting you keep forgetting about, or the names of countries you can’t keep straight, if they might decide that forty-five is perhaps quite enough for the people of Fillory to demand you serve?”

The queen’s hand trembled, but her jaw was set. The room went completely silent. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I, Mum? Would you like to find out?”

Jane turned to Eliot, tears on her face.

“I’m sorry, Eliot,” she said. “And you, too, Margo. I’ve failed you. You needed your mum, and I wasn’t there. And I was so frightened - of _losing_ you - that I started to think maybe it really was for the best that you be kept behind glass, even though I hated it every bit as much as you do.” She turned back to her mother, a hand on each of her children’s shoulders. “Look at them, Mum. They’re not props for a legacy or some bullshit sacred mythos. They are my _children_. And I swear on my life, I will take you off the throne before I will let them feel the things you have made me feel my entire life.”

The entire room hung in silence for a moment, until:

“I still don’t think-” Charleton began, but Margo grabbed the now-tepid pot of tea and dumped it in his lap. 

“Oh, I’m _terribly_ sorry, Cee!” she said, grabbing him by the arm and forcefully shoving him, sputtering and dripping, toward the door. “So _clumsy_. You know, I think all that _cocaine_ I did must have done a number on my reflexes! Let’s go get you cleaned up!” With a grin and a thumbs-up at Quentin and Eliot, she left them alone with the queen and Jane.

The queen looked over at the two men, and Quentin saw it in her eyes at last: she was _afraid_ of them. Afraid of the threat they pose to the perfect veneer she’d spent her whole life maintaining. Change _terrified_ her, because if the veneer was cracked for them, what else might get seen for what it really was?

And Jane wasn’t backing down.

“Well,” the queen said. “I suppose you don’t leave me much choice, do you?”

****  
On the drive, Quentin called Julia.

“How did it go?” she asked. He let out a groan, running his hands through his hair.

“All right, actually? I’ll tell you the rest when I get home. Jules… I’m gonna need your help.” 

He could hear her smile even over the phone. “Why, Q, I thought you’d never ask.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was so, so satisfying. thank you all for your incredibly sweet comments so far! i've got a few more chapters to go but we're definitely in the endgame now, folks.


	14. big damn heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> q remembers a burger. todd has a podcast.

Quentin had been in meetings and briefings and strategy huddles before. But he’d never been the _subject_ of one. For hours upon hours, he chugged coffee and scribbled notes and worked right alongside the team trying to figure out how to handle, well, _everything_. Having the go-ahead from Eliot was helpful, but there was still a lot on their plates - especially with no new leads on how the leak had happened in the first place. Everyone operated under the assumption that it was Plover’s camp, but there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do to prove it.

The one thing missing, for Quentin at least, was Alice. By the time he got back to DC, Julia told him, she’d been missing for a while. No one had heard from her or seen her, nearly since the leak broke.

“She’ll be back soon, Q, I know she will,” Julia reassured him. It lowered his spirits just that much, that his best friend had somehow vanished at the moment he needed her the most.

“Oh, hey,” Julia added, reaching into her bag and handing him a folded-up sheet of paper, “Here’s the favor you asked for.”

He skimmed the first few lines of neat typeface. 

“Oh, my God, Jules,” he said. “I - oh my _God_.”

“Do you like it?” she asked, twisting her hands nervously. “I was trying to capture, you know, who you are and your place in history and that way you have of talking about things like they _matter_ and-”

He cut her off by scooping her up in a teary-eyed hug, muttering, “It’s perfect” into her hair. 

“Hey, First Offspring,” Zelda said as she appeared in the doorway. “Madam President wants to see you in her office.” Her eyes unfocused for a moment as she listened to something in her earpiece. “She says to bring the donuts.”

****  
The donuts were gone in less than an hour. They worked in clumps, with Julia typing and backspacing furiously, Kady making quiet but terrifying phone calls, the president buried in probability projections, and Quentin shuffling a deck of cards nervously between his fingers.

The doors to the Oval Office burst open, and Alice Quinn came skidding in, in possibly the least dignified movement Quentin had ever seen from her. She looked exhausted, hair flying in several directions, wearing a stained QUINN FOR CONGRESS ‘02 T-shirt and a giddy, if wild-eyed, expression. 

“Where the _fuck_ have you been?” Quentin couldn’t help exclaiming as he got to his feet. She slapped a thick folder down on the president’s desk and turned to face Quentin and Julia. 

“Okay, I know you’re pissed, and you have every right to be, but I have been holed up in my apartment for _two days straight_ doing this, and you are super not gonna be mad anymore when you see what it is.”

“Alice, honey, we’re trying to figure out-” the bemused president began.

“_Jo_,” Alice practically yelled. The room went silent and she went bright red. “Uh. Sorry. Madam President. Mom-in-law. Please, just… you all need to read this.”

The president sighed, pushed the papers she was poring over aside, and grabbed Alice’s folder instead. Alice vibrated with so much energy she was practically made of it. Quentin and Julia exchanged clueless looks, and then-

“Holy _fucking_ shit,” Jo said, fury and confusion both creasing her face at the same time. “Is this-?

“Yup,” Alice said.

“And the-”

“Uh-huh.” 

Jo put a hand on her forehead. “How the _hell_ did you get this? Wait, let me rephrase: how the hell did _you_ get this?”

“Okay, so,” Alice pulled back from the desk and started pacing, all eyes on her. “The day of the leaks, I got an anonymous email. Obvious burner account, untraceable. Believe me, I tried. They sent me a link to a fucking _massive_ file dump and told me they were a hacker and had obtained the contents of the Plover campaign’s private email server. All of it.”

“And you didn’t report any of this to the proper channels because…?” Kady asked, more curious than accusatory.

“Because I wasn’t sure it was even legit at first, and then when I did, I didn’t trust anyone else to handle it,” Alice answered, a trace of snippiness tinging her voice. “The hacker said they specifically sent it to me because they knew I was… personally invested.” She glanced at Quentin and sent a tiny, tired smile his way. “They said they knew I’d work as fast as possible to find what they didn’t have time to.”

“Which is?” Quentin asked.

“Proof.” Alice’s voice started shaking again, but not out of exhaustion or excitement. Quentin knew that look: like she was one inch away from erupting into a being of pure, icy fury. “Proof that Plover fucking set you up.”

The president looked stunned but somehow not surprised.

“We… we suspected that the RNC had somehow been involved,” she said, moving to come over and squat down in front of Quentin. “I had people looking into it. But I hadn’t imagined Plover would be so _stupid_ to do it directly.”

As Jo opened the folders and began spreading out the emails, Quentin slid down onto the rug to start reading and sorting them. Alice joined him, a light touch on his wrist to assure him. Alice explained something about writing code to sort through the emails and manually picking out the ones about him and Eliot, but his attention was caught by a blurry photo in the pile. 

It was his own face, but blurry, distant, not quite distinctive enough to be certain. Clearly captured on a long-range lens, it was hard to positively identify until Quentin spied a detail on the edge of the picture: a set of elegant ivory curtains that he’d become very familiar with. The ones hanging in Eliot’s bedroom.

Feeling completely nauseated and yet oddly calm, he looked up at the text above the picture, detailing the email it had been attached to. _Negative. Ess says that’s not nearly clear enough. Tell the P we’re not paying for Bigfoot sightings._ Ess, as in Plover’s campaign manager.

“Plover outed you, Q,” Alice said, anger creeping back into her voice. “As soon as you left your mom’s campaign, it started.”

Jo and Kady each had a stack of papers now, viciously highlighting and annotating them.

“I don’t have any bank account numbers or anything,” Alice added, biting her lip. “But if you look, there are pay stubs and invoices with dates of service, and… Everything, guys. Everything is there. The go-betweens and the fake names and the layers of contracting out to try to hide it. There’s a digital paper trail for everything. Enough to open a federal investigation, at least, which could subpoena the Plover campaign. Plover hired the firm that hired the hackers who breached your server and the photographers who papped you, and then hired another fake company to buy all the material and resell it to the _Daily Lorian_. We are _literally_ talking about hiring private contractors to surveil a member of the First Family and infiltrate White House security to try to spark a sex scandal to benefit-”

“Alice, could you just…?” Julia had returned and plopped herself down with the rest of them amidst the files.

“Sorry,” Alice apologized. “I drank… way too much coffee to get through all this, and then I took an edible to try to calm down, so I am in a _weird_ spot right now, sorry.”

There was a stretch of silence, punctuated just by the rustling of papers. Quentin tried to process, but kept coming back to one thing: he could walk out of this room and call Eliot and tell him that they were safe, that no one was going to keep coming after them, that they could put a name and a face to it and a stop to all this.

“So what do we do with this now?” Julia asked. “Do we leak it?”

“After what they did to Q?” Jo set her pen down and took her glasses off to rub at her eyes. “I’m taking this motherfucker down. This has to stick. We’re leaking it, all right. But not to WikiLeaks or some other bullshit site. We’re leaking to the press.”

“No reputable publication is going to run this without some sort of verification the emails are real,” Julia pointed out, ever the practical one. “And that could take _months_, if it ever happens.”

“Alice, isn’t there _anything_ you can do to trace who sent these?” the president asked. Alice shook her head.

“I tried. They did all the right things to hide their identity.” She grabbed her phone and tapped it a few times. “Here, this is the email they sent.”

As Quentin stared at the email, his eyes flickered to the random string of letters and numbers that sat in place of a signature at the bottom: 305 SBA. BAC CHZ GR ON A1.

The gibberish triggered something in Quentin’s memory, and he picked up the phone, ignoring the others’ protestations. 

“Well, goddammit.”

305 SBA. 

305 South Brakebills Avenue.

The closest Five Guys to the office where Quentin worked that summer internship. He still could rattle off the order he was sent to pick up at least once a week, more often two or three times. Bacon cheeseburger with grilled onions and A1 sauce. He felt himself start to breathe again, and then, to his surprise and everyone else’s, to laugh.

It was code - code for Quentin, and Quentin only. _You’re the only one I trust._

“This isn’t a hacker.” Quentin said, looking up at the team around him. “Rupert Chatwin sent this to you. That’s your verification.” He pointed at the signature, then looked up at his mother. “If you can protect him, he’ll confirm it for you. It’s him.” 

****

_You’re listening to “Political Party,” hosted by policy analyst Todd Elliott._

_**TODD:** Hi, I’m Todd Elliott, and with me as always is my endlessly patient and merciful producer, Fray, without whom I would be lost adrift in a sea of bad mixed drinks and worse life choices. Say hi, Fray._

_**FRAY:** Please send help._

_**TODD:** And this is “Political Party,” the podcast where I attempt to break down for you what the hell is going on in Congress and why you should give a damn. _

_Now, I gotta tell you folks, I had a very different show planned out a few days ago, but I don’t really see the point of getting into it now, because we’ve got a much bigger story to talk about. I’m talking, of course, about the story the Washington Post broke this morning. We’ve got emails, anonymously leaked and confirmed by an anonymous source on the Plover campaign, that clearly show Christopher Plover - or, at least, high-ranking officials on his campaign - orchestrated the fucking diabolical plan to have Quentin Coldwater stalked, hacked, and outed by the Daily Lorian as part of an effort to take down Jo Coldwater in the general. And then, about - oh, what would you say, Fray? Forty minutes? - forty minutes before we started recording this very podcast, Senator Rupert Chatwin tweeted he was parting ways with the Plover campaign._

_So. Uh. That’s a lot of “wow” for one day. _

_First off, I don’t think there’s really any need to discuss any possible leak other than Chatwin. It’s obviously him. From where I’m sitting, this looks like the case of a man who maybe didn’t want to be there in the first place - or maybe even infiltrated the campaign in order to do - Fray, am I allowed to say this?_

_**FRAY:** Has that literally ever stopped you before?_

_**TODD:** Fair. Anyway, Mayakovsky Bourbon is paying me the big sponsorship bucks to give you a political analysis podcast, so let’s at least try to do that, mkay? Even though what’s happened to Quentin Coldwater - and Prince Eliot, too - hey, shout-out to the Elliott club!_

_**FRAY:** You know he’s literally never going to hear this?_

_**TODD:** You never know! Anyway, what’s happened to these guys over the past few days, let’s be honest, it’s been despicable, and it feels a little gross to even be talking about this in a political context. But this was a political act, so let’s talk about three major political takeaways from the past couple of days._

_One: the First Son didn’t actually do anything wrong, except have bad taste in Star Wars movies._

_Two: Christopher Plover committed a hostile act of conspiracy against a sitting president, and I for one cannot wait for the federal investigation after he loses the election. _

_And three: Rupert Chatwin has emerged as perhaps the most unlikely hero of the 2020 presidential race._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost there, y'all! let me tell you, these last few chapters will probably feel weird af in light of the latest twists in the show itself, but too late now! as always, thank you so much for your kind comments - they're my favorite part of this whole thing :)


	15. guess we'll have to play an honest game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> quentin makes a speech. rupert reveals the truth.

A speech had to be made. Not a statement, but an actual speech. 

“You wrote this, Julia?” their mother said, holding the folded paper Julia had handed Quentin on the balcony. “Quentin told you to scrap the press secretary’s statement and you wrote this whole thing from scratch… and this is what you came up with?” Julia raised her chin and nodded. “This is _good_, sweetheart. Why the hell aren’t you writing all our speeches?”

Julia grinned and squeezed Quentin’s hand. They were in the Diplomatic Reception Room, deemed a better fit than the formal press briefing room for a personal address like this. Quentin tried very hard not to think about the fact that the room that once hosted FDR’s fireside chats was about to host his coming-out to an entire nation.

Eliot was flying in for the telecast, too, to stand right behind Quentin’s shoulder, the classic, steady politician’s spouse image. Quentin’s brain couldn’t turn off, running round and round in circles even as he nodded mechanically as the process for the night was explained to him. He kept imagining it in his head, how in less than an hour, millions upon millions of screens would be watching _him_ speak, hearing him say the things that everyone already knew, but not the whole way, not the right way. 

In an hour, every person in America would be able to look at a screen and see the First Son and his _boyfriend_. And across the ocean, several time zones away, almost as many would look up to see their prince, their youngest prince, the dashing one, Prince Charming himself.

The whole world watched. History remembered.

Quentin paced back and forth on the South Lawn, waiting for Eliot’s chopper to arrive. Just before he could really get going with the hyperventilating, the chopper touched down in a whirr of noise and wind, and Eliot emerged, looking like a windswept supermodel in head-to-toe discreet fashion, and Quentin’s panic was interrupted with an undeniable laugh.

“My life is a cosmic joke and you’re not a real person,” Quentin yelled out, wheezing as Eliot approached.

“What?” Eliot yelled back over the cacophony.

“I said you look great, baby!” Eliot grinned, then dragged him off to calm his nerves (and by “calm his nerves,” he meant “make out in a stairwell until Kady found them”). 

And then - it was time. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, Quentin wasn’t afraid for himself. Not of how he felt, not of saying the truth - only afraid of what would happen when he did.

Long, elegant fingers laced briefly with his, and he looked up to see Eliot’s crooked grin down at him. Quentin traced circles in Eliot’s palm.

“Five minutes for the rest of our lives,” Eliot said, offering up a small, nervous laugh. Quentin slid his fingers up to play with (not fix, because of course it was already perfect) the knot of Eliot’s tie. 

“Destiny is bullshit, but somehow… All of this, it makes sense, you know?” he said, eyes hopeful. Eliot just grinned in response in that infuriatingly attractive way of his. Quentin rolled his eyes.

“You are the absolute worst idea I’ve ever had,” Quentin said.

“And you’ve had some very bad ideas,” Eliot replied. As Eliot’s mouth quirked into another smile, Quentin tugged him down to kiss it.

*****

_FIRST SON QUENTIN COLDWATER’S ADDRESS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, OCT. 2, 2020_

_Good afternoon,_

_I am - and have been, first, last, and always, a child of America._

_You raised me. I had visited thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sir - we were in a hurry._

_The first time I spoke to you was from the stage of the Democratic National Convention. I was eighteen, and more terrified than I had ever been in my life. I was there to introduce my mother as the nominee for president. And you cheered me. At that time, I looked like the stock-photo image of the all-American boy, albeit, perhaps, one with slightly longer hair than was socially acceptable for a good WASP kid. _

_You saw what I wanted you to see. You saw the flag pin on my lapel, the microphone in my hand, the way I walked across the stage the way I’d been taught. You saw a boy who knew how to play the game before he even knew who all the players were or what all the rules were. And, like all games, it wasn’t an honest one. It was sleight-of-hand and mirrors and magic to make me seem like the perfect son, not just of my mother and father, but of America._

_Well, the magic’s all used up. Looks like we have to play an honest game now._

_The truth is, years ago, I realized that my brain didn’t work the same way that I thought it “should,” and I sought treatment for it. The truth is, I have struggled for years with anxiety and depression, and tried to keep it under wraps for fear of the stigma we have placed on it as a society._

_Another truth is, years ago, I met a prince, whose country had raised him as much as mine had raised me._

_The truth is, Eliot and I have been together since the beginning of this year. The truth is, as many of you have read, we have both struggled every day over what this means to our families and our countries, as well as our own futures. The truth is, we both had to make compromises that cost us sleep at night in order to afford us enough time to share our relationship with the world on our own terms._

_We were not afforded that liberty._

_But the truth is, also, this: love is indomitable. If the magic of the images we curate is all tricks and distractions and pain for everyone involved, then love is its own kind of magic, and a far better one. I am not ashamed to stand here, where presidents have stood, and say that I love him, as George loved Martha, as Lyndon loved Lady Bird, as Barack loves Michelle. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of partner with whom they will share it, who will be forever tied to them in history and memory. America: He is my choice._

_Like countless others in America and across the globe, I was afraid to say these things out loud because of what the consequences might be. To you I say: I see you. I am one of you. As long as I have a place here, so will you. I am the First Son of the United State, and I’m bisexual. History will remember us._

_I understand as well as anyone what fears may come, and I acknowledge that I speak from a place of privilege: racial, economic, gender-based, power-based privilege. We cannot be ignorant to the realities that we have come so far, and yet, if I am afraid, how afraid must others be who have not been afforded the same luck and privilege in life? And yet, the idea of a loving future, a loving, accepting America, is what saved me. It is a promise that people like me can somehow find a place in history, and it is a promise I make now: to stand proud, to be a voice when I am called upon, and to listen to and amplify the voices that need hearing._

_If I can ask one thing of the American people, it is this: please, do not let my actions influence your decision come November. That decision is far greater and has far bigger consequences than anything I could say or do. My mother, your president, is the champion every American deserves for four more years of progress and prosperity. Don’t let my actions send us backward. I ask the media not to focus on me or on Eliot, but on the campaign, on policy, on the Americans whose lives and livelihoods should be the center of all discussions._

_And finally, I hope America will remember: I am still the son you raised. I wake up every morning thinking of your hometowns, of the families I’ve met, of the people I want to spend my life serving. I have never wanted to be anything other than what I am to you: I am your First Son, in all that I am and all that I do. And I hope, come Inauguration Day, I will continue to be._

*******

Quentin tossed a bag of Skittles on the desk in front of him. Rupert Chatwin turned around, looking tired, but in the normal way, not the bone-deep-drained look he’d had the last time they spoke. 

“Glad some things haven’t changed,” he said as he sat down, tore open the package, and began methodically separating out the green and orange candies, which he automatically slid over to where Quentin had sat down. They chewed on the candy for a moment in silence.

“Was it because of me?” Quentin asked. Rupert shook his head, looking pained.

“No. I wish I could say… I didn’t know. If I’d known, I swear to you, I’d never have let it go this far. By the time I got ahold of it, things were already in motion, so I knew the best thing I could do was get the ball back in your court. So getting the leak to Alice seemed like the quickest route to get to you directly… indirectly… you know.”

“Then what was all this about? You just put yourself at the epicenter of a massive political scandal… why?”

Rupert gestured for him to sit down, so Quentin did. When he looked up to meet Quentin’s eyes, he had more pain in his eyes than Quentin had ever seen in him. He opened his mouth a few times before finally starting to speak.

“While you were working on my campaign, I believe you met my brother Martin once,” he began. Quentin cast about in his mind and finally was able to conjure up an image of Martin Chatwin: thin, nerdy, wary, almost a dark shadow to his effervescent, charming older brother.

“I remember him. Sort of,” Quentin admitted apologetically. Rupert waved his hand.

“No, it’s not a problem of your memory. Martin doesn’t like the spotlight, and he _certainly_ doesn’t like politics. He showed up once or twice to support me as a brother, but even that was like pulling teeth. But it wasn’t always that way.” Rupert’s face took on a harder expression. 

“When we were in college, Martin studied political science too, just like me. We used to talk about going into politics together, taking the country by storm, side by side, working outside the two-party system towards a brighter future.” A small smile crossed his face for a brief moment. “Then he got an offer to intern for a congressman who was up-and-coming at the time, but anyone could tell he was going to become something big. And Martin was so excited to be on his campaign. I’m sure you can guess at this point that we’re talking about Christopher Plover.”

Rupert stopped for a minute to collect himself.

“I’m sorry. Even after a couple of decades, it’s still… not my favorite story to tell. And it's not even mine _to_ tell, really. But you need to understand,” he explained. Quentin waited until he spoke again.

“Anyway. Martin came home from a weekend event a few months into the campaign, and he was… it was like he was a totally different person. He got tense and snappish and secretive, he dropped out of his internship and even changed his major. It took a while, but eventually he told me what had happened.” 

There was a moment of silence. Quentin’s mind whirred and finally caught up to what Rupert was implying.

“Jesus Christ, you’re not saying-”

“Plover had a habit of dangling his power and connections over the people beneath him. He had a habit of collecting those who were dependent on him - for a job, for a recommendation, for a favor, for a career, you get the picture.”

Quentin cringed, and Rupert’s lips curled into a bitter smile.

“So I walked into his office one day and told him I was through, and that if he _bothered_ my brother one more time, I’d take it to the press. That’s when he pulled out the file. He called it his ‘insurance policy.’ Everything about our family. About our parents, about my sister’s teenage delinquency, about the time Martin spent on a psych hold when he was fifteen, everything. He told me that if I ever said a word, not only would my career be over, but he would ruin my entire family’s lives. So I shut up.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t know if Martin ever really forgave me for that.”

“Rupert, you couldn’t have-” Quentin started forward, but Rupert shook his head.

“It was an impossible situation. But I wish I could have protected my brother better. But I never forgot. Every time I’ve seen him in the Senate chamber, he’d look at me like I owed him something… no, that’s not quite right. Like he _owned_ me. And I knew a man who’d do all of that would do some seriously shady shit to win the presidency, and I just… I couldn’t let a fucking _predator_ sit in the Oval Office. Not if I could stop it.”

Rupert was shaking by that point. He took another handful of Skittles, chewed them, and resumed his story. He explained everything: how he’d realized that men like Plover didn’t abuse their power just once, that he knew, with more access, he could probably turn up more evidence and leak it. How he knew he was too old now for the dirty old man to want to corner in a hotel room, but he could still play him: tell him he didn’t believe Jo could pull it off, that he’d bring in the moderate and LGBTQ+ voting bases in exchange for power.

“I was so focused the whole time, searching for evidence… I should have been paying closer attention. I never even noticed if there were whispers about you.” Rupert’s voice cracked. “I never fucking learn.” Quentin’s heart sank, realizing the connection Rupert had made, and he shook his head, mutely trying to offer some semblance of acceptance and understanding. “But when that all came out… I had access to the servers. I’d done enough in my teenage hacktivist days to still know some people who could do a file dump. Don’t you dare look at me like that, I’m not _that_ old.”

That got a laugh out of both of them, and a hint of tension went out of the air.

“Anyway, I knew it needed to get to you and your mom, and Alice - brilliant girl, honestly - was the best bet. And I knew… well, I hoped… you’d understand.”

“Did my dad know?” Quentin couldn’t help asking.

“About me going full-on triple-agent? Nah. Half my staff quit, my sister hasn’t spoken to me in months. The only person I told - other than Lance, of course - was Martin,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t have done this without telling him.”

“No, about Plover and…”

“Quentin, your father is the only other person alive I’ve ever told any of this to,” Rupert said seriously. “He helped me when I needed it most, and I’ll always be grateful, but… he wanted Martin to come forward, about Plover. Martin just… couldn’t. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the guy who forced his brother to relive his trauma for political gain. Honestly, I didn’t even think what happened to one gay kid twenty years ago would have made any difference to Plover’s base. And more than anything, neither of us thought anyone would believe him.”

“I believe you,” Quentin said immediately. “I just wish you’d told me.”

“Come on, Q. You would have tried to stop me. You know I couldn’t.”

“It was a _fucking crazy_ plan, Rupert!”

“I know.” There was something heavy in his voice. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fix the damage I’ve done, but I can’t make myself care. I did what needed to be done. There was no way I was letting Plover win. My whole life has been a fight - but this was one I just couldn’t lose.”

Quentin got it, if he was honest. He had the same constant weighing of options going on in his head, and his mind drifted to the thing he hadn’t been able to think about since all this started: his GRE results, unopened and shoved away inside his desk. _How can you do all the good you can do?_

“I’m sorry, by the way,” Rupert added. “For the things I said, while I was… you know.”

“It’s okay,” Quentin said, and meant it. He’d forgiven Rupert already. He’d forgiven him the minute he realized that he’d never betrayed them in the first place. “But if you ever call me ‘kid’ again after all this, I _will_ kick your ass.”

Rupert laughed, a real one this time. “Hey, you’ve officially had your first sex scandal. I think that earns you a place at the grown-ups’ table.”

“God, it fucking sucks that it’s like this, with Plover,” Quentin commented. “Even if you expose him now, the conservative creeps always want the homophobes to be closet cases so the straights can wash their hands of it and keep believing their stereotypes. As if most of them aren’t just good old-fashioned bigots.” Rupert nodded sympathetically.

“Yup. Especially since I think Martin was the only male intern he ever tried it on. Just like most predators, it’s nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power.” The disgust permeated his voice. “Still, I’ve been thinking about it. Most people have pretty much figured out I’m the leak. It’s not like I tried to hide it or anything. So I think, sooner or later, someone is going to come to be with an allegation that’s not out of the statute of limitations. Then we can open up a congressional investigation, a real one. And _that_ might make a difference.”

“I heard a ‘we’ in there,” Quentin said. Rupert grinned back at him.

“Well, me and someone else with law experience. Just a suggestion,” he said, holding his hands up. “But you’d be really fucking good at it. Still, not gonna try to tell you what to do with your life.”

Quentin thought about it for a minute, imagining standing up in a hearing or a courtroom, getting to put away the people who had hurt him and the people he loved. But for the first time in years, that path felt just a little bit wrong.

“If you’d said that six months ago, I’d have been LSAT prepping like nobody’s business,” Quentin began. 

“But now?”

“But now… I have GRE results buried in my room that I haven’t even looked at, and I think… I think I might have had enough of politics. For now, at least.”

Rupert snorted. “I sure as hell can’t say I blame you for that. In that case, here’s to Professor Q of the future?” Quentin threw a Skittle at his forehead for that, but deep down, something felt inherently _right_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a couple more chapters now, friends! i've been so excited to write this chapter for a while, and i hope you all enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it! please let me know what you thought, if you have a moment!
> 
> i hope you are all staying safe and healthy and (relatively) sane! things are tough right now. take care of yourselves, and take care of each other <3


	16. we're the kids in america

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> quentin broods, then makes a decision.

Officially, Eliot had his own room in the White House while he was in town for a couple of nights before returning to Fillory for his own round of damage control. The kicker? The customary bedroom for royal guests was called the Queen’s Bedroom.

“I don’t think ‘royal’ is the kind of queen they had in mind here,” Eliot said delicately upon entering the room, which was, in fact, filled with enough ornate details and muted shades of pink to make Dolores Umbridge giddy with glee. He’d agreed to sleep in the room rather than in Quentin’s “because I respect your mother,” as if the whole world, including Quentin’s mother, didn’t already know in graphic detail what the two of them had done when they’d shared a bed. 

Quentin, on the other hand, had long since gotten over his inherent shyness, and Eliot only put on a show of grumbling and politeness when Q snuck in from his bedroom just down the hall. They woke up together, half-naked and cozy together, and basked in their last morning together for a little while (and by basked, they meant _did a few of the things mentioned in those emails because why the fuck not at this point?_).

It was those memories he clung to during the stressful election season, as he and Eliot were separated far more than either one of them would like. But there was one bright - if awkward - spot during the summer, when Quentin traveled to Fillory to visit Eliot and - get this - take official royal suitor photos (because, yeah, that was a thing, and Kady apparently had FaceTimed Penny to flip a coin for the privilege of getting to be the one to tell him). 

That’s how he found himself sitting on a bench in one of the gardens at Whitespire, watching TikToks over Josh’s shoulder while Margo and Eliot debated with the photographer about lighting and poses and composition and a lot of other things that Quentin vaguely remembered from an art elective sophomore year. He’d won the wardrobe battle, at least: instead of the fussy suit or sweater-and-blazer combination he feared, he’d convinced them to let him wear something he’d actually wear in real life: a light blue button-down shirt and dark jeans with unfussy shoes. And, much to his delight, Eliot had gotten his way too: no scrupulously neutral, preppy clothes, but a dark blue shirt with the collar open _just enough_ to be a little scandalous, a coordinating waistcoat, dark pants, and a camel-colored jacket, regardless of the Fillorian sunshine. 

Eliot sauntered over to the bench where Quentin was sitting, followed by Margo and the abashed-looking royal photographer with the ridiculous nickname Quentin had already forgotten.

“Alright, Tick, let’s get this show on the road, chop chop,” Margo said, looking smug. Tick - _that was his name!_ \- smiled ingratiatingly, only a twitch of the jaw betraying his annoyance. As Quentin got up to join Eliot, he caught a glimpse of Josh staring up at Margo with an awestruck look… and Margo almost _preened_ when she noticed? _That_ was a new development, but Quentin’s attention was almost completely occupied by his attempts to not look like a slouchy nerd next to the whirlwind of elegance that was his boyfriend.

To Quentin’s surprise - although, maybe he shouldn’t have been so surprised, given Margo’s interference - the pictures were a lot less stuffy than what he’d expected. He’d figured on stiffly posed photos, formal and devoid of any intimacy, partly because of the royal thing and partly because of the gay thing. Instead, when Tick showed them the pictures on his laptop, it turned out he’d captured the in-between moments as much as the actual poses he (and Margo) had directed them into. He’d caught the moment Eliot had slung an arm around him and pulled him into his shoulder, despite his wriggling; he’d caught the moment they’d been playing with their entwined fingers, he’d caught the moment Eliot whispered something in his ear that sent them both into peals of laughter.

Tick hurried away with promises to narrow them down to the best few (and to run them by Eliot and Margo first, not the queen), leaving the trio alone, flopped out on the grass to have half-conversations about everything that was going on. Princess Jane had apparently moved her offices into Whitespire proper, rather than in Muntjac House where she’d been keeping her household up until this point. When she had dropped by their photoshoot just to check in, Quentin had seen the look in her eye: an ambitious glint he recognized from his own mother when she set her mind on the next goal. She’d be gunning for the throne soon, he suspected, although he hadn’t mentioned it to Eliot or Margo. Still, Jane was clearly trying to be a better mother, and she was quickly proving to be another champion for Quentin - she’d even dropped a kiss to his cheek on her way out after doing the same to El and Margo.

“She offered to read my draft this morning,” Eliot said, twirling a bit of Quentin’s hair between his fingers as they laid there. “It’s like she’s trying to make up for a decade of lost parenting all at once.”

“She’s trying, El,” Margo chided gently. “Give her a little time to warm up. You’re a _lot_, after all.” Eliot half-heartedly smacked her, then turned his accusing gaze on Quentin, who hadn’t been able to stop himself from giggling.

“Anyway,” Margo said, “I can’t stay here long playing picnic with you two. I’ve got meetings to handle. Turns out it’s really fuckin’ hard to launch a controversial and ambitious fund on which your entire future reputation will rest.”

Margo and Eliot had spent the fall making major decisions on their futures, and Quentin had watched the whole thing nervously, hating that he couldn’t actually do anything to fix any of this if any of it went wrong. He should’ve known better than to worry. The decisions were made: no military service for Eliot (“Although, you must admit, I would have looked _fabulous_ in uniform,” Eliot had said regretfully, and Quentin was _very_ grateful that he could at least hold that image in his imagination forever), no trying to pretend the revelations about Margo hadn’t come out, and, most importantly, what the two of them were going to do going forward.

The solution had been - like most of their best ideas - something they came up with together: a pair of foundations, one for each of them, under their own names. Margo’s supported addiction recovery and arts therapy, while Eliot’s focused on LGBTQ+ rights. To launch her foundation, Margo had put together a charity concert, the centerpiece of which would be her first public music performance in an official capacity.

“Shame El here was too busy signing papers with Pen-Pen all weekend, or we could’ve learned a duet,” Margo said mischievously, with an exaggerated wink. 

“Margo!” Eliot shot her a warning glance, which only served to pique Quentin’s interest further. “It was _going_ to be a _surprise_.”

“What was?” Quentin asked, looking between the two. Eliot sighed and propped himself up to face Q.

“We were going to wait til after the election, to avoid stealing the spotlight, you know,” he began.

“As you always do,” Quentin agreed solemnly, earning a cackle from Margo and a poke in the ribs from Eliot.

“_Anyway_,” Eliot continued, “Mum and I agreed the foundation shouldn’t just be focused on Fillory. After… well, after everything, and all the support from all over the world, I couldn’t imagine not trying to give something back. There’s work to be done all over the world. So I _may_ have convinced Penny that he was spreading himself too thin with his transportation initiative as well as his youth shelters and had him sign them over to me.”

“You _what?_” 

“I did. You are officially looking at the proud father of four soon-to-be shelters for disenfranchised queer teenagers around the world. I always knew I’d make a truly spectacular DILF,” he added with a smirk.

“Oh my _God_, you little fucker,” Quentin yelped, throwing his arms around Eliot. “I _stupid_ love you right now, you know that? Wait,” he said, a thought occurring to him. “Oh my God, does this mean the one in Brooklyn too?”

“It does.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to be hands-on with the foundation?” Quentin said, his heart rate increasing exponentially in giddy glee and fear in equal parts. “Don’t you think maybe… direct supervision might be important in getting things off the ground?” He shoved a bit of hair out of his face as he looked up at Eliot hopefully.

“Q, babe, as much as I’d enjoy being… _hands on_ in America,” Eliot started, earning a synchronized eye roll from Quentin and Margo, “I can’t just _move_ to New York. I’m the prince of… here,” he said, waving his hands elegantly at everything around them.

Quentin’s heart dropped, even as he knew Eliot’s answer was perfectly logical. Before he could spiral - or latch onto one of the techniques his old therapist had taught him to avoid spiraling - Margo chimed in.

“Why not? It doesn’t have to be permanent. Though I wouldn’t exactly blame you if you went full-on Harry and Meghan and bounced,” she added with a glint in her eye. “El, you spent a month of your gap year talking to sloths in Brazil. Homeless queer youth and a sweet little nerd are definitely a step up.”

“Hey!” Quentin said reflexively, only to get a shrug in return. Eliot, meanwhile, seemed speechless - a true rarity.

“Well, I’d still hardly see you,” he said. “If you’re in DC for work all the time, beginning your quiet plot for world domination?” And he had a point, Quentin had to admit - except for the fact that the surprisingly excellent GRE scores sitting on his desk back home had that plan to take Washington by storm by the age of 35 looking less and less interesting by the day. He was about to open his mouth to say as much when Charleton approached their little group.

Quentin and Eliot both tensed on instinct, while Margo fixed him with a cool glare. Since the speech, Charleton had come to try to make amends with all of them, apologizing first to Eliot and Margo for everything he’d done since their father’s death. And then, much to his surprise, he’d asked Eliot to put Quentin on the phone to apologize to him as well. Eliot had reported, with some surprise, that Charleton was apparently sticking to it, too - he’d fallen out with the queen, although not so much that they weren’t on speaking terms as she was with the rest of the family.

“I, ah, I wanted to see if I could come by and help with anything.” He looked down at Margo’s sensible boots for setting up for the event later. “You know you don’t have to do all that?”

“Yes, but you see, I _want_ to do something other than sit on my royal derriere,” Margo replied sweetly. “As excellent as I am at ordering people around-”

“Truly, the best,” Eliot interjected, raising an invisible glass to toast her.

“-I’d rather earn my reputation as a royal bitch some other way.” 

Charleton flushed an interesting color, then tried again, this time attempting to make conversation with Eliot and Quentin about the photoshoot. 

“He’s trying,” Quentin commented as they watched him walk away, five incredibly uncomfortable minutes later. 

“He is,” Margo agreed. “But he’s still got a long way to go before he stops being an insufferable prick. Until he ovaries up and does something more meaningful than being slightly less polite to Granny, I reserve the right to be insufferable right back.”

“The High Queen has spoken,” Eliot said, throwing one arm around her shoulder and the other around Quentin. “Come on, Bambi, if you make those doe eyes at Josh I bet he’ll make us something _amazing_ for lunch.”

*****

The weeks leading up to the election were the most anxiety-inducing of Quentin’s life. He thought he was doing a pretty good job of hiding the existential dread that his inconvenient bisexual international affair was going to screw over his mother and, by extension, the entire country and possibly global politics as a whole, but leave it to Alice Quinn to notice that he was very much _not_ okay.

“You’re worried about Texas,” she said bluntly one day, surprising him as he stared into his closet mournfully and causing him to nearly drop his phone.

“I’m not-” he started to protest, but a single _Alice_ eyebrow reminded him that there was nothing he could hide from her. “Okay. Yeah, I am. It’s just… argh.” He plopped down on his bed, and Alice perched next to him. “It’s just… I’ve always managed to walk this tightrope, right? All-American, all-Texas, all-Democrat. I got away with being, y’know” - he gestured at himself vaguely - “because I did all the right things, said all the right things, wasn’t too controversial. And even then, there was a very loud and large contingent that didn’t like me, or Mom, and didn’t want any part of me representing them.

And now, _shit_. Not being straight. Admitting to mental illness on national TV. Having a boyfriend. Having a _gay sex scandal with the fucking Prince of Fillory_. I just. I don’t know anymore.”

“So you’re worried about what you’re gonna wear on election night because you’re afraid of offending Texas’s delicate hetero sensibilities?”

“Um. Yes?” Quentin tried. Something about that made her face soften.

“You know, you could just ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Q. Ask me about the polling numbers on you in Texas. I know you keep going to look at them and chickening out.”

He couldn’t help chuckling at that. “There’s no hiding anything from you, is there, Vix?” 

“No.” Alice smiled primly before taking his hand. “They’re not bad, Q. They’re… _good_, if anything. Our base in Texas hasn’t shifted since before all this. If anything, it might be more favorable to you. A lot of the undecideds are pissed that Plover came after a Texas kid.”

“God bless Texas tribalism,” Quentin quipped. He let out a shaky breath and flopped backwards on the bed. After staring critically at him for a moment, Alice flopped back with him.

“Look, Julia’s a lot better than I am at the whole goddess-of-communication thing, but since she’s not here, I’m gonna give it a go, okay?” Quentin’s nod urged her on. “I don’t think this is just about the polls or about Texas. You’ve just been fucking traumatized in a huge, public way, and I think now you’re afraid of being yourself because you don’t want to draw any more attention to yourself. I _know_ you, Q. It’s taken you years to get comfortable in the spotlight, and that’s only when you could control every aspect of it.”

Quentin had to laugh. There was something so refreshing about Alice’s honesty. She had this way of getting at the heart of the matter with some bizarre mix of bluntness and precision, and he loved her for it.

“I guess… yeah, that’s part of it,” he said. “I know I have to start rehabbing my image if I want any chance in politics, but now part of me is just like… really? After all this? My whole life, I was hanging onto this future where I was gonna go straight forward. College, campaigns, staffer, Congress. No pit stops, no deviation. Keep my mind focused. I was the person who _wanted_ that. But now I’m sitting here and…”

“And you’re not that person,” she finished. She nudged their shoulders together. “But do you like him? This new Quentin?”

Quentin took a minute to think about that. He’d never really been the kind of person who “liked” himself. Tolerated, sure. Means to an end and all that. But liked? He wasn’t even sure how other people liked him. Now, he thought, he was definitely different. Still soft, but less of a pushover. More neurotic - if that was even possible - but also more honest. Clearer head, more open heart. Someone who doesn’t want to hide and repress everything underneath that Gifted And Talented Turned Workaholic life, but who has more reason to fight than ever.

“Yeah,” he said, surprising himself. “Yeah, I do.” Alice squeezed his hand. 

“Good. Me too. You’re Quentin, that’s all you needed to be.” She sat up, pulling him with her. “But, like, do you need me to run any projections, or anything?”

“Uh. Did I tell you I sort of snuck off to take the GRE this summer.” He waited for her reaction, and Alice, as always, managed to surprise him.

“_Oh!_ Grad school!” she said, as obviously as she’d said _dick you down_ all those months ago. “That’s it, Q! That’s awesome! PhD, right? Obviously. I’m applying for my master’s, we can do this together!”

“You think I can hack it?” Quentin joked (although he was only half joking). She answered him with a reassuring grin, bouncing with excitement.

“Q, this is genius. Listen. We both go to grad school. Julia becomes a speechwriter-slash-author voice-of-a-generation literary goddess, I become the data scientist that saves the world, and you-”

“-become a badass professor who gets summoned to testify in Congress without having to actually deal with the bullshit of politics-”

“-you and Eliot become the world’s favorite geopolitical power couple-”

“-and by the time I’m Rupert's age-”

“-people will be _begging_ you to run for Senate-”

“-and I will promptly tell them to fuck off,” Quentin finished. At the surprise on Alice’s face, he leaned forward. “Look, Vix. I used to think the only way to change the world was walking the halls of power, making laws and debating and fighting the fight for constituents. But now I’m starting to realize that making all those deals with the devil might not be worth it. Look what Rupert had to do, and he’s one of the good guys. I can’t… I can’t _do_ that. I guess… I have to find another way, you know?”

Alice looked at him with pride. 

“I do. And what’s more, I think you already _are_ changing the world. You’ve become, like, an _icon_ of something, which is a huge deal. You’ve been through so much, but. You give people hope, the kind of hope you’ve always been looking for. Now you get to be the one to give it.”

A noise startled both of them out of the sweet moment. It was Julia, brandishing her phone, hair flying every which way and looking happier than they’d seen in her months. 

“I got the book deal!” she shrieked. “I was checking my email and - my research about the Hedge Witch movement - _I got the fucking deal!_”

Quentin and Alice screamed too, and they yanked her into a tangled three-way hug, bouncing around and getting hair in each other’s faces and not caring at all. They hopped up on the bed in a pile and Alice FaceTimed Margo, who tracked down Penny and Eliot in Eliot’s room, and all six of them celebrated together, huddled together around two phones on two beds on two separate continents. The Super Six, indeed.

Hours later, after Julia had fallen asleep sitting up against Quentin’s headboard, with Alice’s hair splayed out on her lap, Quentin picked up the newspapers that Julia had dropped when she came in, and nearly dropped it again in surprise. The cover image was one of the ones from his and Eliot’s photoshoot - he hadn’t expected it out so soon. But it wasn’t one of the stiffly posed, formal shots. In fact, he didn’t even remember it being taken. Tick had - somehow - captured the moment where Quentin had cracked a truly terrible joke and Eliot’s serene face had just _broken_, and they’d been giggling at each other, with Quentin’s hand caught in the action of moving Eliot’s more securely onto his shoulder. 

He thought again about Brooklyn, about Eliot’s shelter project, about all the rom-coms where a tweedy writer lived out of a beautiful brownstone that they shouldn’t be able to realistically afford. As he pulled on his pajamas and climbed back into bed, he realized something spectacular. The election was tomorrow, and he was going to sleep well tonight. A year ago - hell, six months ago - he would have tossed and turned the whole night, his brain coming up with a million disastrous scenarios, each more painful than the last. But that Quentin was gone, or, at the least transformed into a global icon (and how fucking weird was that?), into someone who could laugh easily with his royal boyfriend on the cover of a magazine, into someone okay with not having things planned out in front of him. Into someone who could give himself time.

Quentin tucked himself into Julia’s side, threw one of his legs over Alice’s, and went to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. the finale made a few of the choices i'd made in this fic a little awkward in hindsight. but too late now! i'm curious to know what you thought about the finale (and about this chapter, of course) - let me know in the comments!


	17. where your love has always been enough for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> election night arrives.

**Pilot says we’re having visibility problems? May have to reroute and land elsewhere. **

**Landing in Dallas? How far is that? I have no fucking clue about American geography and I don’t care to learn.**

**Josh informs me this is, in fact, far. Will try to take off again when the weather clears.**

**I’m so sorry. How are things on your end?**

_things are shit._

_please get here i’m this close to snapping._

******  
**Todd Elliott @PoliticalPartyPod**  
Any GOP-ers still backing Plover after his actions towards the FSOTUS - and now this week’s rumors of sexual predation - are going to have to reckon with their Protestant God tomorrow.

**Five Thirty-Eight @538Politics**  
Our projections had Michigan, Ohio, Penn., and Wisc. all at a 70% or higher chance of going blue, but latest returns have them too close to call. Yeah, we’re confused too.

**The New York Times @nytimes**  
#Election2020: a bruising round of calls for Pres. Coldwater brings the electoral tally to 178 for Sen. Plover. Coldwater lags at 113.

“Kady, did they call Texas yet?” Quentin asked as he paced.

“Nope. Too close to call.” 

“Still?”

“_Still_,” she answered. And there was something in her smile, something terrifyingly feral and shiningly hopeful all at once that he’d never seen from her before. She nodded out at the restless crowd, where staffers and supporters mingled and waited for each new round of calls. 

“It’s gonna be a while. You should say something,” she said. 

“_Me?_ I don’t think-” Quentin began, only to be cut off when Alice appeared at Kady’s shoulder, looking as if she’d appeared out of nowhere.

“She’s right, Q. You’re the one they should hear from right now.”

“But I-” Quentin trailed off, trying to wrap his head around all of it. “Won’t I just make things worse? What if they hate me for ruining things in the swing states, you don’t know that they don’t blame me for-”

“_Quentin_.” Alice said, getting that determined, _don’t-mess-with-me_ look on her face that made her look almost inhuman. “No one _blames_ you. You’re among friends here. This is home. People here love you. And right now, they need you and your stupid, beautiful optimism to give them a boost. It’s your turn to do the uplifting shit this time.”

The spotlight was almost blinding when he walked out, but he carried that hope with him, that kernel of knowledge that _Texas wasn’t called yet_. Quentin might not have been Texas-born, technically (_thank you, Mom and Dad and your “babymoon” trip that landed me with a birth certificate in that cesspit known as Jersey_), but Alice was right about one thing: this was _home._

“Hey, everyone,” he said. He kept one hand squeezed tight on the mic stand to keep himself steady. “I’m… Quentin, your First Son,” he added, then promptly cursed himself silently for a lame introduction to a crowd that knew perfectly well who he was. He caught Alice’s eye in the corner, where she stood with Kady and Zelda, and she nodded encouragingly. When he spoke again, he _meant_ it.

“You know what’s crazy? Right now, Anderson Cooper is on CNN saying Texas is too close to call. _Texas_. Is _too close to call_. Y’all might not know this about me, but I’m sort of a history nerd. And other kinds of nerd too, but I digress. Anyway. Me being such a nerd means I can tell you the last time Texas was too close to call was 1976. Bicentennial year, making history already, and then we went blue, helped Jimmy Carter squeak out his victory over Ford after Watergate.

Now, I’m thinking about it, and, well, you tell me what you think. A hardworking, reliable, compassionate, honest Southern Democrat versus corruption, maliciousness, bigotry, and hate. And one very big state full of good, honest people who are very tired of being lied to. Well,” he said, grinning and shrugging as the crowd went wild, “It just sounds a little familiar to this history nerd, is all. So, what do y’all think, Texas? We gonna make some history again?”

The crowd’s answering cheers told him everything he needed to know. For that brief moment, he didn’t feel like some nerdy kid whose sex scandal almost derailed the whole shebang. He could have been a king, he felt so buoyed. The second he stepped backstage, there was a hand on his back, and he’d know that hand and its every move in any place, in any time. 

“That was fucking _brilliant_,” Eliot said. “So much for Quentin the Moderately Socially Maladjusted, all hail Quentin the Inspirational!” Quentin couldn’t even be mad about the jab, because Eliot was _there_, and looking spectacular in one of his elaborate suits with a waistcoat and a tie that was-

“Your tie has-”

“Right, the yellow rose of Texas, did I get that right? I thought it might be good luck,” Eliot said, and he looked so _nervous_ about getting it right that Quentin’s heart turned into a puddle of mush right there. He wrapped the tie in his hand and used it to pull Eliot down into a kiss. 

He wished, for a moment, that he’d been braver sooner, that he wouldn’t have banished Eliot to a hedge of frozen shrubbery, that he’d done something other than stand there while Eliot gave him the most important kiss of his life. It could have always been like this. He could have taken Eliot’s face between his hands and pressed their foreheads together and promised him, “You are more than what they tell you to be, and you deserve to take the things you want most.”

“You’re late, Your Highness,” is what he said instead, lacing his fingers through Eliot’s ring-laden ones.

“Just in time for the upswing, actually. Good luck just follows me around,” Eliot replied breezily. He was talking about the latest round of calls, which apparently came out while Q was onstage. In the VIP area, no one was sitting down, everyone standing nervously as Anderson Cooper read out the results. Michigan: Coldwater. Colorado: Coldwater. Virginia, Pennsylvania: Coldwater. It almost made up the gap, with the West Coast strongholds still to go. 

Penny had come along too (although Josh had stayed behind to “keep Margo company,” Eliot revealed with no small amount of glee), and had gravitated to the corner where Julia, Kady, Zelda, and Alice had congregated. As Eliot and Quentin headed over too, Rupert Chatwin joined them, along with his husband Lance, and he and Quentin shared a small, understanding nod. Quentin felt his skin buzz with the energy of being amongst these people - his _friends_ \- and with the staggering realization that, given a little time, this group could pull off a bank heist or bring a country to its knees or change the whole goddamn world.

10:30 brought the big rush. Plover managed to snag Iowa - _damn_ \- and grabbed Utah and Montana too (unsurprising), but then the West Coast came storming in with California’s fifty-five electoral votes, not to mention Oregon and Washington. Rupert high-fived Ted Coldwater as the numbers came in, sticking close to the little family-and-friends group that had formed instead of venturing out to where the other VIPs were waiting. And by midnight, they were in the lead again, and it finally started to feel like a party, even though things were far from sewn up yet. Quentin went to grab a cup of punch and got distracted at the table when he spotted Eliot fixing Julia’s hair across the room. He couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face at the sight of his two favorite people in the world, and he was so distracted by them that he didn’t even notice another person crossing his path until they literally collided. 

“Doesn’t all that media training include something on deportment and grace?” came a familiar drawl. “If you steal your mom’s spotlight again, I’m pretty sure she might disinherit you.” 

He turned to see James, grinning and looking like Q remembered: tall, sweet-faced, smirking, with just that hint of prep-school-boy that he never could quite shake off. Quentin had a brief moment of frustration that he’d had _such a type_ for so long and never even noticed it.

“Oh my God, you came!”

“Of course I came,” James said with a grin. Behind him, a cute guy was grinning too. “I mean, I felt like the Secret Service might come requisition me from my apartment if I didn’t. I know how much you love a good party,” he added mischievously. Quentin rolled his eyes.

“Well, you know me, I never miss a chance to get down and par-tay,” he deadpanned. They both grinned, and on tonight of all nights, it felt good to be able to clear the air on one more dangling thread of his life and to be around someone who’d known him long before all of _this_.

A week after he’d been outed, James had texted him. **1\. i wish we hadn’t been such heteronormative assholes back then. we could have helped each other out with all this. 2. fyi, some dipshit from one of those right-wing websites called me yesterday to ask me about my history with you. i promptly told him to go fuck himself with a cactus, but figured you should know.**

“Listen, James, I know I owe you-”

“You do _not_,” James cut him off emphatically. “Seriously. We’re cool. We’ll always be cool.” He nudged the cute guy as his side. “Anyway, this is Micah, my boyfriend.”

“Quentin,” Q introduced himself with a handshake. “Good to meet you, man.”

“It’s an honor,” Micah said earnestly, and _goddamn_ James did well for himself, didn’t he? “My mom canvassed for your mom way back when she was running for Congress, so like, we go way back, I guess. She’s the first president I ever voted for.”

Quentin opened his mouth to reply but was stopped by a shout of his name from the Important Corner. “Shit. I gotta go. But, James, we have like, a shitload to catch up on. Julia will definitely want to see you too. Can we hang this weekend? I’m in town all weekend. Let’s hang this weekend.”

He was already walking away as he talked, earning an all-too-familiar eyeroll from James as he shooed Quentin away. As it turned out, the interview - with Buzzfeed, apparently - got cut off abruptly as Anderson Cooper’s face filled the giant screen, ready to call Florida.

“Come on, you backyard-shooting-range motherfuckers,” Kady muttered under her breath next to him.

“Is that… a thing?” he asked, mildly alarmed. She grinned briefly.

“You have so much to learn, nerd,” she said, not without fondness. 

The screen flashed red. PLOVER, it read in big bold letters, and a collective groan filled the room. Fucking Florida man strikes again.

“Alice, what’s the math?” Julia asked. Alice started to babble about the electoral votes needed, only to have Julia cut her off again.

“Yeah, we _know_ all that. What I’m saying is-”

“I know. Okay. So. Right now we can get past 270 with Texas or Nevada and Alaska combined. Plover needs all three. So it’s still up in the air.”

“So we _have_ to get Texas now?” Quentin asked, nerves rising again. Alice shook her head.

“Not yet, not unless they call Nevada, which never happens this early, so-”

Once again, Alice found herself cut off, this time by Anderson Cooper returning yet again. Quentin only had a brief moment to wonder if Eliot’s “mind palace” technique would ever help him stuff away what would probably be years of Anderson Cooper stress dreams before the red flashed again. NEVADA: PLOVER.

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me?”

“So now it’s essentially-” 

“Whoever wins Texas wins the presidency,” Quentin finished. 

Their group scattered somewhat, meandering around, grabbing bites of increasingly soggy and cold pizza, trying to talk or even think about anything else. But when it came down to it, they just kept gravitating back together. Win or lose, this was something they had to do together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only one more to go, folks! i'm so grateful to everyone who's stuck with me through this whole story and the inconsistent posting and the back and forth. thank you, thank you.


	18. let's fly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> texas forever.

By 12:30 a.m., no one could believe it was down to this. Texas had never gone this long without being called in the history of its statehood. If it were any other state, Quentin knew, Plover would have called to concede by now. But it’s _Texas_, and Rupert was pacing, and Ted was fiddling with his phone, and Kady was finishing a call to let Josh (and, presumably, Margo) know what was going on. Jo was pacing too, exhaustion setting in.

That’s when Julia came bounding up to them, dragging along a girl with a pixie cut in a poll volunteer shirt. One of Julia’s research buddies from the Hedge Witch thing, Quentin recalled. 

“Y’all,” Julia said, breathless. “Marina just… she just came from - fuck, Marina, just tell them!”

“We think you have the votes,” Marina said, and Quentin could have kissed her right there. Alice dropped her phone. Eliot’s hand tightened in Quentin’s.

“You think, or you know?” Jo asked, grabbing Marina’s other arm.

“I’m… pretty sure?” Even Marina, who Quentin remembered Julia describing as “a full-on ‘don’t fuck with me’ bitch,” looked slightly terrified, but still happy. “They just counted another ten thousand ballots from Harris County and-”

“Oh my God-”

“Wait,” Eliot said, drawing their attention. “_Look_.”

He pointed up at the projection screen, where Anderson Cooper was getting ready to call it. 

Texas stayed gray for five more seconds, then flooded beautiful, unmistakable blue. 

Thirty-eight electoral votes for Coldwater. 301 total. And the presidency.

“_Four more years_,” Jo screamed, losing decorum and grabbing Julia and Quentin to press into a hug. She kissed her husband, clasped the hands of Rupert and Ted, and grabbed Alice to plant a kiss on her forehead.

From out front, the cheers began, first in a slow murmur, then a roar, pressing in all around them, from the viewing room, to the city outside, to the parties flashing across the giant screen from across the country. And Quentin imagined, from all over, maybe even in Whitespire too, where a few sleepy allies waited for this news with them.

Eliot, with tears streaming down his face, grabbed Quentin’s face in both his hands and kissed him like the end of the movie, then shoved him at his family. He flung his arms around whoever was nearest, grabbing Alice as she let go of her parents, then, spotting Rupert throwing Coldwater campaign flyers in the air like some dumbass from a movie, pushed through the crowds to throw his arms around the senator who’d helped this all happen. 

When he looked around for Julia, she’d disappeared. He spotted her a few minutes later locked in a corner with Penny… and was that _Kady?_ Quentin shook his head quickly - that was _not_ something he had the emotional capacity to think about right now, but if Julia was happy, he was happy. He turned his attention back to the center of the room, where Eliot and Rupert had their arms thrown around each other, where James and Micah raised cups in a toast, where over a hundred campaign staffers and volunteers were screaming and crying and holding on to each other. It felt as if they’d lived an entire lifetime in the span of this one day, this one night, but it was worth it for how it all ended. _Victory. Hope._

Quentin found himself shoved right back where he wanted to be, into Eliot’s arms. And after _everything_, after the emails and texts and late-night FaceTimes and secret hookups and nights of yearning, the whole hating-then-pretending-then-loving and having-the-worst-timing-ever things, they _made it_. Maybe there might have been a version of them that didn’t make it, maybe there were dozens of alternate timelines where they’d never managed to figure their shit out, or maybe they’d always found their way to each other. But here, from the ashes of history and the rules they’d blown up along the way, they’d forged a new world - and it was pretty damn good.

“I need to tell you something,” Eliot said, leaning down so Quentin could hear him. “I. Uh. I brought a brownstone. In Brooklyn.” And all of a sudden, a whole life of possibility flashed before Quentin’s eyes, of a new term with no elections left to win, of a schedule packed with classes and TA’ing and Eliot, Eliot smiling at him from the pillow next to him in the soft light of a New York morning, sunlight and curls the only crown he'd ever need.

“Well, it’s not a cottage with a courtyard, but it’ll do,” Quentin said, and Eliot looked down at him with a laugh and with so much love Quentin thought he might be able to lift right off the ground. 

Quentin found himself shuffled over to a small group near the stage, behind the curtains where their whole group was filing onto the stage. His mom and stepdad, his dad and Julia, Alice and her parents. Quentin strode out after them, waving into the white glow of the spotlight and, for once, not feeling even a little bit afraid. 

Then he realized Eliot wasn’t at his side, and he turned back to see him hovering in the wings. Uncharacteristically unwilling to step into the spotlight, for fear of stepping on someone else’s moment. But that simply wouldn’t do. He was _family_. He was part of all of _this_ now, of history and headlines and stories. He was part of _Quentin_, too. Always.

“Come on!” Quentin yelled, waving him up. Eliot looked panicked for the briefest second before he jutted his chin up, pulled his shoulders back in that effortlessly royal way of his, buttoned his jacket, and stepped out onto the stage. He stepped up to Quentin’s side, beaming too. Quentin slipped one hand around his waist and the other around Julia. Alice pressed close to Julia’s other side. For a second, they pulled together into a small circle behind the Adults, heads together. 

Then President Jo Coldwater stepped up to the podium. 

*****  
The second round of confetti was still falling when Quentin grabbed Eliot’s hand and said, “Follow me.” And that was a command Eliot would follow anytime, anywhere. Quentin convinced James and Micah to lend them their bikes, and before Eliot could protest about getting helmet hair, they were off, slipping out into the night. 

Everything about the city felt different from when Quentin had been a kid. _Home_ was such a strange concept. Was _home_ here, near the streets where he’d crawled for the first time? Was _home_ an hour or so away, where he and his dad had eaten cereal and read books and cheered on his mom? Was _home_ DC, now? None of it felt like “home” because he’d changed. Or, maybe, all of it was a little bit of home - including the man at his side. 

It took about twenty minutes to reach Cottage Avenue, and then Quentin led the Prince of Fillory up a curb, showed him where to put the bike, took his hand, and walked into the front door. The sound of Eliot’s breath echoing with his in the empty house felt natural. It, too, felt like home.

He showed Eliot everything - the bay window where his mom had sat with him as a baby, the height chart on the side wall where she had painstakingly tracked Quentin and Julia's growth every year, the handprint stain on the wall, the table Quentin and Julia used to lie under and make up their grand adventure stories. They’d been paying a family friend to keep the house up while they’d been in DC - letting it go just never was part of the conversation. There was no confetti here, no voices of pundits, no speeches. Just a First Son in his childhood house where he first saw a picture of a prince, and something started.

“We _won_,” he couldn’t help saying, wonder still slipping into his tone. Eliot took his hand, eyes gleaming in the reflected streetlight.

“Yeah,” he said tenderly. “We did, didn’t we?”

They sat on the front porch for a little while, time bending until it was meaningless. After a while, Eliot stretched and looked down at Quentin.

“Feet back on the ground, Q?” he asked. Quentin grinned.

“Nah, you know what? Let’s fly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are, old friends. you and me on the last page. what started out as a thought in the back of my head months ago has turned into this monstrosity of a fic. and, i think, into something resembling catharsis for a show that helped me put myself together and then broke my heart again. i'll always love it. i'll always hate it. but more importantly, i'll always love all of YOU for sticking with this, and with me. 
> 
> the world's a pretty different place now than it was when i started writing this, but the same things matter. compassion over cruelty, generosity over greed, good over evil, light over dark. i don't know what our timeline looks like going forward, but i know that we're all part of history, and we're all going to play some small part in moving things forward, no matter how long it takes or how hard it is. take heart, have hope, and know how extraordinary you are.
> 
> peaches and plums.
> 
> -cate

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my entry into the "fuck canon, give queliot a rom-com" genre. let me know what you think, pretty please?


End file.
